Me too! Mine stopped working after a couple of years; the summertime humidity glued the sand together into a single mass.
My older brothers (who liked to fist-fight each other, a point with some importance later on) got me one of these games when I was a kid. It was the coolest thing ever! It featured the Los Angeles Rams Vs. the Detroit Lions. I was really excited about it. I got to put the stickers of the players numbers on all thier backs and tweak the little dohickys on the bases to make them run in different patterns. I played with it for hours that happy birthday.
Later that day, or very shortly after, the brothers got into it. During the melee, as I recall, it was Jim that fell backwards and landed on the playing field, denting it right at about the 20 yard line near the sideline. It tore the rivit lose and creased the metal, so there was no real fixing it.
From that moment on, all subsequent attempts at play resulted in both the offense and defense slowly making thier way to the low spot and kinda forming a giant, dancing, spinning cluster. Took the wind right out of the old sails, it did. Not realizing it at the time, the electric football game had become an electric Grateful Dead concert. I shoulda repainted everybody in Tie-dye.
You are obviously not familiar with the concept of the “home-field advantage”. My babysitter’s kid sat on my Super Bowl XI edition electric football game and put a big dent in the corner. The players would all migrate towards the bottom of the dent when they were near it. If you knew about the dent, you could aim your defense toward it, knowing the opposing fullback would end up there eventually.
Electric football f-ing rocks, and I am glad to see so much opposition to the OP. If there is a funnier sight than that of a guy having a conniption fit watching his two burly linemen locked in a midfield polka while your running back scampers past them untouched, I don’t know what it is. I have to leave now, but believe you me, I shall be posting again later.
Well, y’know, these things were popular in a day and age where “video football game” meant “little LED things that went beepledy-doopie-doo across a little screen with a gridiron painted on it”…
Naturally, it might seem a BIT lame compared to the latest PC product with Madden’s name on it…
Oooo!! I loved the “beepledy-doopie-doo” football video game!
Of course we had a vibrating football game and in addition to exciting football contests, we also used it for the plastic army men to gauge warfare, and the cowboys and indians to do battle as well. Sometimes it would be the football players vs the army men, etc. Hours of fun!!
This is a great thread! Too bad I was having my morning coffee while reading it. Ah well, my monitor needed a wipe anyway.
I had one of these games as well, and it was fun! Never could make the players go where they should, and teammates would indeed “dance” together while the ball carrier went for his opponent’s goal line (or the sideline or his own goal line; he didn’t care).
Never invited Weebles or Barbie or any other toy to play, though. In our home, we had Minnie the Cat; who, after her initial wariness of the game’s buzzing and vibrating, would join in.
She was kind of a team all unto herself–perhaps she always wanted to be a fe-linebacker? (groan). Not so great on on offense, but incredible on defense when she stretched out on the 50-yard-line. Nobody could get by her. And when she felt like being a little more active, she would tackle players with her paw. (“You got him, Minnie, and the play’s over. Don’t eat him!”)
It was a challenge to play a game when she was around. But we somehow managed, and we had a great time doing it. Many happy memories of that game.
Ah the first introduction to random chance- just turn the board and watch chaos theory in action. Good Times.
Hmm…so I guess the game did not always necessarily come with teams that faced each other in a Super Bowl if yours came with the LA Rams and the Lions.
First of all, both of these teams are in the NFC so they could never have played in a Super Bowl.
Second of all, as anyone from Michigan knows, the Detroit Lions have never and probably will never go to a Super Bowl, unless they buy tickets and sit in the stands like the rest of us!
The Rams did make it to one Super Bowl when they were a Los Angeles team, losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers in what proved to be the last moment of glory for the Terry Bradshaw/Mean Joe Greene-led Steeler dynasty.
And then there were five. I think it’s what caused me to become a sedimentologist.
Mmmmmm… stoned Lite Brite.