Xalax was even stranger than Drome Racers, as far as Racers subthemes go. I had Warrior from 4569 as a kid but not his car, and eventually an older friend gave me a bunch of Lego that included a few Xalax cars but none of the little guys. They had a lot of cool, unusual colours, but the pieces themselves weren't really much use for anything else.

This was just a terrible Batman movie. The worst.

Me: Can we have Netflix and chill?
They: No, we have Netflix and chill at home.
Netflix and chill at home:

The crystals here are a rare color. And I recall that it had a lot of jewels in transparant domes to be used as pylons of a sort.

And the main ramp is cool as it closes on whatever ends up in it, leaving behind tough terrain. I recall that it also had multiple builds. Not bad for the only Xalax set with anything else than the racer, driver and launcher.

There's also white LURPs and blue arches cropped out of this image. A better overview of the contents can be seen here:
https://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set-reference/racers/xalax/lego-4579-ice-ramp-racers/

@RogueWhistler said:
"Xalax was even stranger than Drome Racers, as far as Racers subthemes go. I had Warrior from 4569 as a kid but not his car, and eventually an older friend gave me a bunch of Lego that included a few Xalax cars but none of the little guys. They had a lot of cool, unusual colours, but the pieces themselves weren't really much use for anything else."

I know that basically everyone does it, but I really dislike people considering Xalax, Drome and Radio Control just being sub-themes of the "same Theme". They are distinct enough in build, style, marketing and lore to all being different Themes on their own.

Even the post Drome era (2005-2012) Racers felt very separate from the earlier years, with it's more grounded, modern day tuning theming rather than the pseudo-futuristic, lore-driven Drome Racers.

Strangely, everone seems to not count World Racers and Speed Racer towards the "Racers" theme, despite them being basically the same idea as well - and marketed as such in many catalogues. Also the 2000 Race theme ("Stunt Rally"/Create'N'Race) would fit better there than in the "Town" category, for people who really want to cluster isolated themes together.

I like how this set here is one of the few occasions where we got a "Biodium" rock piece in a different color (Medium Blue). It's also the only occasion two Ramas (that's their species name) had the same color launcher device. If I remember correctly, Freeze is the more round, monstrous guy, whilst Chill is the rectangular one. They both appeared as opponents and NPCs in Lego Racers 2 (not all Ramas did!).

The only Xalax set that can ever be Random Set of the Day, due to all the others being excluded for having less than ten pieces each...! (car chassis with pre-attached wheels, car front, car back, alien driver, large plastic non-Lego launcher, two rubber bands, 1 sticker sheet = 8. The tiniest of teeny-tiny sets, just gaze in horror at that 37.5p price-per-part value...!)

That said... I unironically love these little guys. Partly comes down to Lego Racers 2 being my first action-based Lego video game so it was exciting to see them in animated action, partly because I was into Lego for the characters and story worlds as much as anything else at the time and car-racing aliens on an icy planet that can only be accessed by space portal was just the right level of weird to appeal to me, and partly because I have fond memories attached to the four of them I got new.

4567 Surfer was my first because I liked his character and logo design best out of the first wave; I remember being so confused at first when he only had four pieces to assemble and feeling a little bit cheated, but I also remember that we stopped in to but him on the way to a dentist appointment, and I recall having a lot of fun playing with him in the dentist's waiting room since it had taken me next-to-no-time to build him.

I also got 4576 Duster from the second wave after seeing the spread on them in the summer Lego World Club magazine; his appeal to me was three-fold, since I really liked his goggles, wanted to get one of the racers with the other head mould to the one I already had, and in 2001 tan was still a rare enough colour that it made his car feel more special than some of the others.

I had the promotional 1239 Subzero (a.k.a. Lightor in Chill's car - albeit with a different colour wheel base - and without the launcher), who was free with the purchase of a certain number of Walls ice cream products from Tesco and so I remember talking my Mum into buying waaaay more ice cream than we'd normally have, just so that I could get him...

And later that year, my parents got me 4572 Scratch for my birthday. It was the second year I had my birthday cake topped with a Lego set (something that would become a regular thing going forward), and my Mum went all out with the design, decorating the cake to look like a section of a racetrack, with a grandstand full of jelly-baby spectators, to give him a suitable environment!

So, yeah. To me, these guys were fun (though could have benefited from perhaps a brick-built launching mechanism to have given them more parts for their cost...), and I would have loved to have got more of them, especially the special edition glow-in-the-dark 4578 Ghost whose car also happens to be my favourite colour scheme. (I did have 4574 Rip for a while but didn't keep the second-wave racers in the end, and currently also have 4570 Shredd who I found in a charity shop the best part of a decade ago now.) At this point I'm just keeping an eye out for any of their loose pieces on Bricklink when I'm placing other orders, just to see if I can assemble them that way with minimal cost and effort...!

Xalax was a very cool theme. But a bit too early for me to have any real exposition to it, outside of Lego Racers 2 which I played and loved a lot.

That really shows the difference between Lego sets and games. The sets come, hang on for a year or two and go, but the games stay and let those featured themes shine on for years to come.