While I knew this show existed, I had no idea it had actually been released in English, along with the toys. Possibly because I’m not Australian. Or a child.
Like Yu-Gi-Oh or Beyblade, it essentially takes the target audience’s own experience with the toys and adds a layer of fantasy on the top of it. It’s a different relationship of the audience to both the toy and the cartoon compared to the toy based cartoons around when I was growing up. With Thundercats, He-Man, Transformers and the like there wasn’t a real viewer substitute in the cartoons (if there was, they weren’t the main hero), nor did the actual toys show up in the cartoons themselves. Instead the toys were representations of things in the cartoons and your relationship to them when playing was more director than actor. With a show like Crush Gear Turbo, you’re basically watching a kid, presumably your own age, play with same toys you’ve got (or will have if the advertising works!). You’re almost part of the show, part of the world of the show.
I think that’s where a lot of videogame adaptations come undone. You’ve got these toy shows adding a level of identification and immersion to the cartoons and toys, but in most cases a videogame adaptation is removing that. Pokemon gets it right by applying many of the “rules” of the game to the world of the cartoon, so you can identify with Ash and chums if you’ve played the game. Too often videogame adaptations are obsessed with the characters and game world, rather than the rules, despite the fact that whether or not they are conscious of it, the rules and mechanics of the game are what are most impressed on the player’s memories. That’s why Dave Chappelle’s Grand Theft Auto skit is better than 99% of videogame adaptations.