Jan

25

Yellow Jacket - The Beach Crazy Cyclist

Filed Under Cycling, Interbike, Racing 

I hope you have some time to kill, because this will certainly suck you in.


Norev Mini Peugeot Team
Have you ever seen these little French die-cast metal miniature cyclists painted in pro team colors like the ones below? I actually have a couple at home: one Peugeot rider with arms up in victory salute and one St. Raphael-Gitane guy in the drops going all out. A few US mailorder companies have sold them here over the years.

Well, from what I can tell, these miniature racers are very popular with French kids and they play a game with them and marbles at the beach. A race course is carved out in the sand with a shovel and they take turns shooting marbles around the course. Their mini racer is placed where the marble stops until their next turn. The racer with the fewest shots to get to the finish wins. The guys at MegaFilms in France remembered playing with them as kids and decided to make some short movies. The result is the “Yellow Jacket - Beach Crazy Biker” series. The star and hero of the series is Yellow Jacket - he of the eternal victory salute. His arch-rival is Black Jacket - oufitted head to toe in black (and with aerobars on his bike).

Yellow Jacket Screen Shot

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think these are great. They even have an online game you can play that simulates the real-world in the sand game with marbles. Give it a try by clicking on the screen shot below. I’ve only played it 3 or 4 times, but my best score is only 14. I don’t know how everyone was able to do it in 6 moves. Since it keeps track of the best scores, let’s see how many new best scores we can get up there.


Yellow Jacket the Game


Next time I head down to the beach with the kids, I’ll have to bring my “team” and some marbles and carve out a course in the sand. Maybe even have a big industry competition in Vegas in September.


Comments

3 Responses to “Yellow Jacket - The Beach Crazy Cyclist”

  1. aki on January 26th, 2007 5:15 pm

    13 shots, 2:54.5 seconds. and that was with no “misses”. my first one was 30 something shots. don’t know how to cut the shot count in half.

  2. matt on February 5th, 2007 11:43 am

    Does anyone know where I can buy these little bikes? I remember playing with them as a kid when we went to France but haven’t seen them since!
    Any help would be appreciated!
    Thanks

  3. Yellow Jacket on May 25th, 2007 10:32 am

    Dear Matt,
    Please register the Yellowjacket.tv newsletter as we’ll keep you updated with cyclist toys range upcoming release. The best

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