1971 Cheerios TV commercial - "Johnny Lightning".

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The 1971 "Johnny Lightning" promotion from General Mills. For $.25 cents, and 2 proofs of purchase, you would get a Johnny Lightning in the mail.

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Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• 1971
• Cheerios
• Johnny
• Lightning
• Topper
• toys
• General
• Mills
• TV
• retroload
• retro
• cars
• toy
• Hot
• Wheels
• vintage
• classic

[SgtRock57]

How they weren't sued I don't know. That car looks almost like Splittin Image by Hot Wheels.

[rockyPants4000]

Just for future generations' reference:

Johnny Lightnings were the "heavyweight" champions of gravity-powered mini car racing. All of the models had thick metal bodies that were not as finely detailed as Hot Wheels, or Matchbox, but they were very heavy. The JL cars were mainly "fantasy" designs, with few real world car replicas, until later decades under different management.

So they were kind of ugly, but could beat all of the other mini cars quite handily.

[Boris777Z]

The Splittin Image was way nicer.

[dumbbo1]

I distinctly remember this car. When I was a little kid, I stole one from someone. Oops..my bad!

[hotwheelsrawesoms1]

johnny lightning suck!!

[darkwhitedirewolf]

I wonder what that goes for today?

[MRJACKSON19581]

All the fighting and suing that went on between Mattel and Topper back then

Topper did this commercial ..They went and did advertising the Johnny Lightning car using a Mattel Hot Wheels orange track to race this car on? ..*sigh

[rockyPants4000]

@wave60 Nope. There were still a coulple of JL's that were MANY ounces heavier (JL purposely made massively heavy cars just to beat HW) than any Hot Wheel made, and they had the light wire axles as well.

But they were ugly, so I never bothered with them. But pure gravity racers always crushed with JLs. In the few "professional" races that were held, JL's were never beaten.

[rockyPants4000]

@sparkey989 It depends on which model you're talking about, and if you maintained them. Hot Wheels and Johnny Lightnings both had light wire axles, unlike Matchbox and others that had thicker rod axles (until the Matchbox "Superfasts" came out.)

So most kids bent these axles during regular play, and slowed these cars down.

But if you "tuned" the axles with aligning tools and adding silicone or graphite, a heavier JL would crush any Hot Wheel.

[sparkey989]

@rockyPants4000 Not really, they were slow.