Both Race Day in Tonka Town and Cars 1 have a lot in common, particularly having anthropomorphic vehicle characters. They are also animated, though each animation format is different. Race Day in Tonka Town is a cartoon produced by SD Entertainment (commonly known as Sabella-Dern Entertainment) and Hasbro, while Cars 1 is a computer-animated movie produced by Disney and Pixar.
Oh yes, the good old days of cartoons. Back in the day, popular cartoon choices included Mickey Mouse, 101 Dalmatians, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Inspector Gadget, Madeline, The Flintstones and lots more. Same with computer-animated movies, like Disney and Pixar's Toy Story movie series. You don't have to be a kid to love cartoons and computer-animated shows and movies, and you don't have to be a kid to love Tonka and Cars toys, games and movies either, even though both Welcome to Tonka Town and Cars 1 were designed as children's movies.
Welcome to Tonka Town was mainly designed for preschool audiences (22 minutes long in total, with each episode lasting 11 minutes), while Cars 1 (nearly two hours long) was designed for older kids as well as adults, but despite such different target audiences for each program, they all have a variety of elements in common, including fantastic storylines that can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages. Let's see if we can get into how and why Race Day in Tonka Town particularly is worth watching as adults, including kids at heart.
The main characters are anthropomorphic vehicles: Chuck the Dump Truck in Race Day in Tonka Town and Lightning McQueen the Race Car in Cars 1, respectively. They have red and yellow colors as part of their paint schemes, and both are young characters. However, Chuck's voice sounds like a little boy, whereas Lightning's voice sounds like a young adult, so I like seeing them as brothers, or should I say, cousins, in spite of their vastly different vehicle characteristics. They would have made great crossover characters back in the day as well. Sort of like Sonic and Miles "Tails" Prower in the SEGA Sonic the Hedgehog video games, cartoon TV shows (such as 1993's Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog) and movies if you ask me.
Chuck the Dump Truck was voiced by Noel Callahan, a voice actor born in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada in 1989, and Lightning McQueen was voiced by Owen Wilson, a voice actor born in Dallas, Texas, United States in 1968, so both these actors have some things in common as well: they were born in southern parts of North American countries, and they were born in late parts of decades of the 20th century.
For those who don't know, Welcome to Tonka Town was a home video released on VHS as a program bundled exclusively with Hasbro Tonka Town toy playsets in the United States and Canada back in 2003, when Tonka Town toys and the Tonka Town 2003 PC game were popular on the market. It features two short stories in a single episode named "Teamwork in Tonka Town" and "Race Day in Tonka Town," and they focus on talking vehicles getting different real life tasks done and having incredible fun at the same time. Meanwhile, the Cars movie series was in development as it began around 1998, eight years before Cars 1 was completed and released in 2006, so I guess Disney and Pixar could have found inspiration from Hasbro's Welcome to Tonka Town if it was incredibly popular, which I will retrospectively explain about in a moment.
It was originally intended to turn into a TV series named Chuck and Friends, but it almost happened because sadly, it became a failed pilot episode for unknown reasons, in spite of the entertaining and educational elements used in both stories of Welcome to Tonka Town. It seems like a mystery! Even then, the program was also released for the Playskool PVD player named the VideoNow Jr. in the United States and Australia, under the Chuck and Friends name. The concept for a kids' TV series about Chuck the Dump Truck wasn't resurrected until 2010, but as a computer-animated series named The Adventures of Chuck and Friends for the HubBub era instead.
Unfortunately, Welcome to Tonka Town never had a DVD release in addition to the VHS and PVD formats it actually managed to get released on. You'd think Welcome to Tonka Town would have definitely had a DVD release around the same time as the VHS version because by 2003, popularity of DVDs was growing imensely. If another company like Warner Home Video or Paramount Pictures was able to release it on both VHS and DVD as traditional, individual items across the globe in various languages in addition to English rather than toy playset-exclusive promotional media items, it could have seen a whole lot more attention during its time. Sort of like how only one Tugs episode managed to have an American dub (Tugs was the sister show of Thomas & Friends).
Think of Welcome to Tonka Town as "the greatest children's truck cartoon you've never seen" if you missed out on it back in the day as a result of it not having a whole lot of attention when it first came out. If you were a kid who managed to get into Welcome to Tonka Town on VHS because of Tonka Town playsets, or the PVD format for a Playskool portable video player back in the day, though, you were lucky! So you may find the points I am going to make on it familiar regarding Race Day in Tonka Town and what I personally consider Cars 1 its unofficial opposition.
Cars 1, on the other hand, had DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD and digital streaming releases in various languages all over the world, making it much easier to find. But not before it was shown at various movie theaters across the globe in June 2006. I remember watching Cars 1 on DVD with my parents when it first came out in 2006. It was the second movie I entirely sat through since the 2004 Christmas movie, The Polar Express, was the first one I ever sat through completely, although I had other movies around the time like Thomas and the Magic Railroad on VHS. Growing up, I always thought that winning was a huge focus in racing, most likely because of how I would try and win some races in various racing video games for the PC, so I found it surreal and upsetting that the opposite of that would be the truth. I never saw Welcome to Tonka Town until much later, when I discovered a VHS copy of it on eBay and decided to buy it on there to add it to my VHS collection in April 2018.
Welcome to Tonka Town's Race Day in Tonka Town episode has been one of my favorite pieces of media about motorsports, alongside NASCAR: The IMAX Experience, Hot Wheels World Race, Mighty Machines: At the Race Track, Real Wheels: There Goes a Monster Truck, USHRA and Monster Jam home videos, and more.
Plus, did you know that Cars 1 was also one of the last Disney movies to have a VHS release in North America, when DVDs and Blu-ray discs were taking over VHS tapes in 2006 and 2007? That means if you live in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea or Philippines, you can play the NTSC-exclusive Welcome to Tonka Town and Cars 1 VHS tapes on any NTSC-compatible VCR from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s or whatever, if you (still) have one to this day.
Oh, and the main point of this blog post is the fact both Race Day in Tonka Town and Cars 1 have very different race ending outcomes, at the end of each program. You see, a lot of great TV show episodes and movies have happy endings, but unfortunately, there are times when it's not always the case.
I've been a happy ending kind of guy since I was kid during the times of releases of Welcome to Tonka Town and Cars 1 in 2003 and 2006, respectively, so let's go over some parts of their plots, especially since Welcome to Tonka Town is definitely long-forgotten, whereas Cars 1 has been much more popular over the years, although both are unrelated. Like all parents, my parents taught me something when I was little: popular isn't always the best thing. Therefore, if you watched the entire Cars 1 movie back in the day, then once you have read the end of this blog post, you may not want to watch Cars 1's final race scene again... or anymore, and you may realize how great Race Day in Tonka Town was as it showed what the final race scene of Cars 1 could have been and should have been. However, please remember that I respect your opinion on Cars 1's final race scene. Without further ado, on with the plot explanations!
What are the storylines of the race scenes of Hasbro: Race Day in Tonka Town and Disney/Pixar: Cars 1?
Race Day in Tonka Town (2003): It is the annual race event in Tonka Town. One year earlier, the crazy villains from V8-Ville named Grease, Pitstop, Tooie, and Turbo won the race because of a Tonka Town team member accidentally driving into a pond for whatever reason. Now it is up to Chuck the Dump Truck, Hook 'n Ladder the Fire Engine, Boomer the Tow Truck and Pat the Patrol Truck to make up for it by getting their trophy back as long as the opposition does not defeat them altogether again. As the race goes on, though, the racers visiting from V8 Ville do anything to stop all the local Tonka Town racers from winning by doing a bunch of crazy tricks along the way. Most especially, Grease made a very rough move against Chuck at the construction site, on the way to the finish line, by bashing into him on his left side, sending him down a very deep trench and causing him to crash land into it! Luckily, with the help of the viewers (I like how Chuck momentarily breaks the fourth wall to provide the audience an interactive moment), he is able to escape and fly out of the hole really fast like a rocket ship and win the race by nose, to defeat all the pesky cheaters to teach them lesson on messing with others, once and for all!
Cars 1 (2006): During the big race in Los Angeles, California (presumably inspired by the real world Auto Club Speedway, when it was a huge deal), a cheater named Chick Hicks, a crazy race car with similar cheating move ideas to what Grease did to Chuck in Race Day in Tonka Town, bashes into The King (inspired by The King of the NASCAR motorsport, Richard Petty), causing him to crash and tumble violently multiple times on the race track's grass! Unlike Race Day in Tonka Town, though, the main hero character, Lightning McQueen, decides to stop before crossing the finish line rather than simply defeating Chick Hicks to team him a lesson on messing with good competitors, just to go help The King cross the finish line, resulting in Chick Hicks managing to get the win. Then it is revealed that it is just an empty cup. This is where everything contradicts the fact that cheaters never prosper.
What are the problems with the final race scene of the Disney/Pixar Cars 1 movie released in 2006?
Although I can give the Cars 1 movie a lot of credit for having a fantastic storyline about Lightning McQueen making friends at Radiator Springs, a memorable soundtrack consisting of lyrical songs and movie instrumentals, plus parts of its plot emulating the NASCAR motorsport creatively with anthropomorphic vehicle characters, there are several problems indeed. The parts regarding cheaters causing trouble and trophies being missed out on by the good racer simply don't mix because the final race scene of Cars 1 tries to be entertaining and educational at the same time, but the key elements and lessons end up being exhibited in a very unbalanced way. While Race Day in Tonka Town did not have a huge amount of popularity unlike Cars 1, the teleplay of the Tonka cartoon felt much more organized in the sense that it completely focused on the lesson of great tactics and strategies of standing up for yourself against bullying done by cheaters during the competition. Sadly, Cars 1 does no such thing. The fact it instead focuses on the main hero character giving up on lifetime goals like trophies instead of defeating the villain to win the trophy as the prize for making a point leaves out part of the cheater's recklessness because it makes it look and feel like the cheater could get their way if they wanted to, when they were not supposed to do it at all. Can't we all agree that it would be a rule for a hero to never let evil overcome anything, and can't we all agree that bullying cannot be ignored?
I can understand Lightning McQueen being concerned about The King suffering the same fate as what happened to the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, Doc Hudson, when he also crashed very badly in a race, but what the script writers at Disney and Pixar should have thought through carefully besides all that is sort out the outcome of the final lap in Cars 1's final race scene. The idea of keeping up with a race lead is sort of like saying it is technically a rule to keep promises, although as Uncle Jesse from Full House (if you are familiar with the Warner Bros. Full House sitcom) would say in the "Silence is Not Golden" 1993 episode of it, "Once in a while, there are exceptions to every rule." So, even though they say that it doesn't matter if you win or lose and sacrificing something is sometimes for our own good, despite the fact that getting a win or finish is technically the goal of a race, well... imagine this alternate, rewritten part to properly focus on one major aspect at a time:
Once Lightning McQueen keeps up and crosses the finish line first to win the race, defeating Chick Hicks in the process as Chick's comeuppance for smashing up The King, Lightning manages to do a victory lap to please the crowd, but then decides to please the crowd even more by coming to The King's rescue by pushing him slowly and carefully across the finish line, just to give all the fans something excellent to see before The King's retirement.
Yep, now that is exactly what should have happened at the end of the final race of Cars 1 in the first place! Some people believe Lightning McQueen could have crossed the finish line first on the final lap just to lock in his win before coming to The King's rescue to give all the fans a great end-of-race moment, and that's the feeling I can relate to. If we had a time machine, like the flux capacitor in the Back to the Future 1985 movie, we could return to the early or mid 2000s and recommend to Disney and Pixar that the final race scene of Cars 1 should turn out the way I imagined it in my previous paragraph above, rather than an unusual concept of handling things.
Race Day in Tonka Town, as a cartoon, had an unusual concept for racing thrills as well, except it was very creative, unique and clever to the point where it had nothing to clash with the lesson of dealing with bullies at the last minute due to the fact it simply shows the main good character, Chuck the Dump Truck, doing a gigantic leap across Tonka Town and defeating Grease and the rest of the visiting V8 team as their comeuppance, as described early on.
Also, remember when the Disney/Pixar Cars movie series also had a video game series based on it? Ironically, the first Cars action/adventure video game came out for the PC, Mac, PlayStation 2, original Xbox, Xbox 360, Nintendo GameCube and the Nintendo Wii shortly before the Cars 1 movie itself premiered, so I guess you could say the Cars series was centered across both movies and video games because of them having different storylines worth enjoying. I believe the Cars 1 video game became one of the best action/adventure games and Wii launch titles of all-time, plus I remember playing the PC version when I received it as a Christmas gift in 2006, when it first came out. It was one of the best kids' action/adventure games I played back then, alongside two other spectacular action/adventure classics for the same platform named 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue and LEGO Island Xtreme Stunts.
And there is a big plus to the Cars 1 video game: if you are familiar with it, and if you played it back in the day, you may remember that if you won the final stock car race when playing as Lightning McQueen, he would manage to get the gold trophy, marking the end of the game's story mode, even if that time, The King was not featured as a competitor in the plot as a result of his prior retirement at the end of the movie. So that's what definitely made up for Lightning McQueen's loss in the Cars 1 movie, even back then!
Furthermore, the plot of the Cars 1 video game feels like a sequel to the Cars 1 movie in a way, and given that the game did come out shortly before the actual movie, there is a bright side to this regarding the Cars franchise. Something that could have been also produced in the movie form as Cars 2, rather than some international spy mission across the globe. There aren't too many instances of children's media showing examples of certain characters initially missing out on trophies in races because of some exceptions but then managing to get winning goals and trophies after all in the end, often as a result of sportsmanship and so on. Well, except, The Chugger Championship episode of Chuggington from 2008 and the Thomas & Friends: The Great Race 2016 movie sort of did, but that's another story.
Which program is the winner?
Both Race Day in Tonka Town and Cars 1 have excellent storylines, great voice acting, wonderful characters, cool music, and fun animation, but when it comes to a spectacular and balanced-out ending, the winner goes to...
Race Day in Tonka Town!
Well, to be fair, Disney/Pixar Cars 1 was not a bad movie, and I am not at all saying that I dislike it, but compared to the Race Day in Tonka Town episode of the Hasbro Welcome to Tonka Town home video, it just doesn't have that great of an ending. Plus, even if Welcome to Tonka Town was designed for younger kid audiences than the target audience of Cars 1, I would take a spectacular, "one giant leap" victory over a frustrating final lap outcome. That's basically the bottom line. Nevertheless, I have lots of fond memories of lots of video game and toy merchandise items based on the Cars movie series!
Should one of these movies be chosen, or should both of them be chosen and watched?
That is a good question. It depends on your approach regarding storylines about race outcomes. If you prefer happy endings like I do, then when you stop and look at the final race scene of Cars 1, it is actually a disappointing ending that could have easily been a better one if they showed Lightning McQueen learning that proving something to cheaters is for their own good in the crazy world we live in, based on what I have described throughout this blog post. Therefore, when it comes to storylines about anthropomorphic vehicles dealing with cheaters, Welcome to Tonka Town may be the greatest choice since for almost a decade now (at the time of this Blogspot blog post's publication), I've always thought that it was one of the best masterpieces that should have had tons of recognition during the golden days of Tonka in the 2000s.
If you still have a VCR, whether it is a solely NTSC-compatible unit or a multi-region unit, I recommend buying the North American-exclusive VHS release of Welcome to Tonka Town as it would be the best version due to it being in full color and its audio in stereo. But then, that's where digitizing it becomes vital as it seems it never had international VHS and DVD releases outside North America, even though the Tonka toy brand itself has done well all over the world. There are some copies of Welcome to Tonka Town on VHS currently available on eBay, in particular.
I would also recommend investing in a high quality capture card (if you don't have one yet), whether it's a USB device that can be simply connected from a VCR to a desktop or laptop computer, or a standalone capture device like a ClonerAlliance device to have VHS content turned into video files onto a USB flash drive without the hassle of moving your VCR from your living or family room to your computer desk. Make sure you look for reasonable prices, high ratings and lots of positive customer reviews on capture cards on Amazon, Newegg or whatever, to see which product is trustworthy.
Then you can turn a digitized VHS capture of Welcome to Tonka Town into a custom DVD disc or a USB flash drive containing lots of other programs to view on your modern HD, 4K or 8K televisions again and again at any time. Heck, even a USB flash drive containing at least a digitized VHS capture of Welcome to Tonka Town would make a great Easter, birthday or Christmas gift for kids, nephews, nieces, cousins, and friends who love Tonka toys and/or anthropomorphic vehicles in general, or if you like to get them interested! Not everyone has a VCR anymore, you know.
If you can look past the shortcomings of the final race scene of Disney/Pixar Cars 1, and if you absolutely want to complete the Disney/Pixar Cars movie trilogy, and if you want to see how it all started, go for it on DVD, Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD too. Based on the information I explained as to why Welcome to Tonka Town particularly would be worth enjoying in adulthood and why it should have been also iconic, it is up to you to see if you would like to watch both Welcome to Tonka Town and Cars 1, or just one of these movies, and see if your kids, nephews, nieces and cousins like both of them, or either one of them as well. If you have kids, nephews, nieces and/or cousins, enjoy the movies with them, enjoy them with your friends, and enjoy them on your own too.
For more information about Welcome to Tonka Town and Cars, visit other websites featuring details for synopsis and cast members such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
Wow, this has been an incredibly long blog post I wrote! I hope you enjoyed it and found it informative and nostalgic as I worked hard on it. Please feel free to share it with others and post comments on it if you see what you like about this blog post. See you next time!
