Anyone have any background on this? The fact that it was voice controlled surprised me as this could be considered fairly advanced for 1937..Any other examples from other manufacturers? Strikes me as tone of the earlier attempts to do a work around of solely using a transformer to control toy trains. I never heard of this. Any extant examples?
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It's a normally closed butterfly switch. It's not as magical or sophisticated as the advertising hype would lead you to believe.
When you breathe or blow on it, the switch opens up and the train stops. When you stop blowing on it, the switch closes and the train goes in the opposite direction.
It's just a simple, delicate layer of flat conductors.
Thanks for the technical explanation of how it worked ( the magicians secrets) although it must have seemed magical to kids in 1937. It just reinforces how Marx came up with simple solutions in the engineering of toys. It would be great to see a video of it in action or something similar. I wonder how many kids thought that forward and reverse had some real power as a magical command..lol.
There was a similar product marketed in the late 50s or early 60s called an Audio-Engineer. It was made by a company called Atomic.
there was a story in another train mag a few years back. the authors Uncle was from Broklyn, and his accent kept the Tower from working. Had a nice pic IIRC.
Louis Marx got Patent #2221963 Voice activated toy train system.
Ron M
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