Most people know that dominoes is a real game outside of standing them up so they can fall over but most people don't know how to actually play it. This is because the game is eclipsed by the amount of fun you can derive from setting off a chain reaction with its game pieces. When you hear the word dominoes, you don't think of the game, you think of shit falling over. In fact, now that I think about it, dominoes is kind of like the game Mouse Trap.
Do you know how to play Mouse Trap? The correct answer is who gives a shit? Just set off the damn mouse trap. Nobody knows how to play Mouse Trap and if they do they never WANT to play it. Everyone just wants to see a Rube Goldberg contraption in action. 
You know what's really weird when you think about it? The "dominoes" in the Domino Rally sets aren't really even dominoes. They can't be used to play dominoes. They're a single solid color, smaller and with a hollowed out void on one side to be as cheaply manufacturable as possible. They're like the most abstracted and stripped down representation of a domino and their only function is to fall over. The only thing you could subtract from them and still retain that function would be their surfaces, just leaving a wire box frame.
Looks like fun! So the name "Domino Rally" is kind of a misnomer. They should be called "Plastic Bar Rally"The thing that makes these sets more appealing than regular dominoes is the "stunts." Each set has some kind of overall theme and a few domino-activated devices or gimmicks that do something besides fall over. A rocket that blasts off or some ball on a track.
Man, look at that! Skeletons and ghosts and everything fucking glows in the dark! Show me someone who thinks this isn’t awesome and I’ll show you a liar.
Most sets had these track segments of attached dominoes which I liked because you could just flip them over and they were set up. But over time and general abuse from a kid, the little fragile nubs would snap off of the dominoes, causing them to fall out of their holders. Then you'd have a line of dominoes with a gap making the whole row useless. I remember setting up broken track segments and then carefully placing regular dominoes in each of the gaps so they'd work, or putting in a domino that still had one nub left so it still more or less worked until it fell out again. Looking back on it, when it comes to that point, just set up the fucking dominoes by hand. But I guess there was still a finite supply of dominoes and you needed to make them stretch for maximum enjoyment.
They came out with an accessory called the Domino Dealer which was this little battery-operated car with a big domino hopper on the top. You switch it on and watch it slowly crawl across the floor, setting up a line of dominoes behind as it went. God, I wanted one of those! Then a thought occurred to me. I had no idea how in the hell you're actually supposed to apply this to setting up a Rally set. It'll put up a perfect line of dominoes. That's great. What happens when I need a curve or a squiggly line or dominoes going up stairs like oh roughly 75% of the time? And the times that you do use straight lines on flat ground, the line is going to be like a foot long or less. It's just a short transition to the next thing. I guess if you really really wanted to, you could set up the dominoes until you get to a straight part and then go get the Dealer so it can lay down 5 to 7 dominoes but that's like calling in the army to take out your trash. Or I guess if you just love watching really long straight lines of dominoes collapse then by all means, Deal it up.Well they also came out with a more advanced version called the Pathmaker that had a few preset patterns it could do but it’s still going to be hard integrating the gimmicks.
This was the one big set that I had. I can't recall exactly where or when I got it but I'm certain I didn't buy it. I can't really remember a time where everything worked correctly and wasn't broken as fuck which either means I got it second hand or I was just a lot rougher on it than I remember. The helicopter blades didn’t spin because whatever mechanism didn‘t work. The thing that branches into five different directions only had some of it’s triggers working so it could maybe do three directions. I think the rocket’s fins went missing so all I had was the Styrofoam torpedo body with a skewed orange sticker on it. I also accidentally swallowed the metal ball used to launch it. (Yes, I know I was old enough to know better. Shut the fuck up.) The orange domino muncher thingy goes down the escalator. It looks like an escalator attached to an elevator with a slide in between. How many or whether at all dominoes are set up on the escalator is pretty irrelevant since the ultimate result is akin to setting up a line of dominoes on a table and then swiping it off onto the floor with a backhand. It really sucked when a gimmick would break because without the weird devices, what do you have? A bunch of plastic bars and a tiny staircase. I conjoined whatever was left of this set with the small sets that I occasionally got to make big rallies. These big rallies that I envisioned usually never came to fruition because I was a stupid clumsy child. I’d spend 20 minutes setting up fucking dominoes and then accidentally knock them all over. Then I’d do it again and again. I started making fail-safes where I’d intentionally leave out a domino every so often to stop the reaction short if accidentally triggered. The only problem with this is that it’s a lot harder to safely insert a domino into a gap than it is place one at the end of a procession. Sometimes I found myself fucking things up while trying to remove the fail-safes.
Once getting everything set up to my liking and flicking the origin domino, some defect or contingency preventing a complete reaction would materialize midway through the rally. Now what? Do I reset and try again or do I pretend it didn’t happen and “help” it continue on, thereby greatly tarnishing the greatness of the overall experience? On the ultra rare occurrence that everything DIDN’T turn to shit, what transpired could only be described as 8 seconds of euphoric glory. Eight seconds… Son of a bitch... I’d spend four super frustrating hours trying to set up rows of plastic bars on the floor just for eight seconds of entertainment. Why did I enjoy this? And you know what I just noticed? THIS…
“Non-stop action!” And it's on every box. If there was ever an appropriate time to use this phrase, this isn’t it. There’s action but it’s literally over in seconds. The action clearly stops. Though if you watch this awesome commercial you’d think otherwise. Jeez, listen to that music. It’s like I’m playing F-Zero on the Super Nintendo. How many sets do you think that is? Like six? As a kid it would take me a week to set that up. Then I'd trip and fall on it.
