GEE- WIZ Racing Game (Winter 2025)

My GEE-WIZ Reproduction

Manufactured By: Wolverine Supply & Manufacturing Company

Release Date: 1923

As mentioned in the introduction to this section I was drawn to this project by a soothing restoration video, but hooked into making a reproduction by the unique mechanism this vintage game used to animate the horses.

The “engine” for propelling the horses up the incline is both simple and elegant. A flywheel is attached to a shaft that is square on one side and round on the other. The round part has a hole drilled through and a "washer like" disk attached near the end of the shaft allowing a string to be threaded then wound around the shaft between the flywheel and the disk. 

The square part of the shaft sits at the lowest part of the incline below six channels that represent a straight race-track. Each channel holds a sheet-metal outline of a horse and rider which sit on top of a "sled". 

A "race" is started by winding a string onto the axle which is mounted by the starting line, and pulling it to spin the flywheel. Each channel contains a captive ball-bearing which, when struck by the angled faces of the square shaft, is thrown against the horse sled, pushing it forward. The ball then rolls back down the incline until it reaches the axle and is again thrown uphill along the channel to hit the horse sled. Here is a patent for the GEE-WIZ.

Although I had access to the tools necessary to produce the stainless steel ”engine” I’m afraid that I don’t have the prerequisite skills to do so. Fortunately for me there are now a number of online CNC services that will mill the part based on a “model” that you upload to their sites, for a fee of course. So I create the flywheel model in Autodesk Fusion and uploaded it to PCBWay. For $90 (US) plus shipping I had a duplicate GEE-WIZ engine in about 2 weeks.

I was lucky enough to find a vintage GEE-WIZ on eBay for a reasonable price that was also in really good shape. The "engine" image above is from my unit. You can see that it has been well used.

I used this original to model and 3D print the parts for my reproduction. Once these parts were assembled I created the GEE-WIZ logo and decals using Inkscape, printed them on some vinyl sticker paper, and attached them to the reproduction.

All in all i think that everything worked out pretty well. I really enjoyed working on this project. The mechanism that makes this work was so clever. The GEE-WIZ Racing Game shows what coolness can be born of a little tin and a lot of imagination.