Woohoo!!! Mattel Football is back! Any of you born in the late '60’s or early 70’s might remember this. It’s an LED handheld pocket football game. It was extremely popular when I was in elementary school and the teachers were always confiscating them. I’d heard rumors of their re-release and tonight I found mine at Walmart. Ahh I’m harkening back to the days of my youth.
A while back I found a shockwave version on the web but last time I tried to play it it was gone. But now I have the real thing!!!
I saw a keychain version of it just the other day. Looked just like the real thing, but only a few inches long. And, um, with a keychain at the end. Pretty cool.
I still have the original football game. I also have Mattel Basketball, and Mattel “Battlestar Galactica”. All of them work and I still play a mean game of basketball.
Mattel Football was the first toy you could freak in odd ways.
When the battery got low, it would start making weird sounds. If the battery was too low for too long, the system would get messed up. All I can remember is that when your pressed down on the ON/OFF switch at a certain angle it would make a freaky set of chirping sounds.
It was a death knell in some ways.
The line plunge could always get you 2 yards.
Now, are they bringing back the “Battlestar Galactica” Cylon shoot.
I don’t remember that one, but I loved Battlestar Galactica. I looked on Mattel’s website but couldn’t find any reference to the football game or any other ‘classic’ handhelds.
Mattel, if you’re listening, I want Football 2 and Mr. Miskatonic wants Battlestar Galactica. Feed our nostalgia!!!
I used to call mine Mean Joe Green. In fact, I dug it out of the closet a couple months ago and was playing it. It still works great.
By the way, how much are they going for on E-Bay?
Looks like they’re averaging about $15 dollars. I’ve seen them for much more though. They’re selling the new/remakes there for more than I paid at Walmart.
Wow…I opened this thread hoping it would be about Mattel footbal…I loved that game and spent hours with it…I have the good moves etched into my brain…I will have to go look for it. I also loved the baseball game, although it was even less realistic then the football game. Geeze, I am sure that kids today look at it and go…is that really fun…yet another sign I am getting old I guess.
I saw the Mattel Football at Best Buy for $14.99 and it brought an instant smile to my face! I had a different version of the game. I gotta find the keychain version!!!
I also had Mattel Soccer, which was fun except the score was usually 10-9 or something like that, so I turned it into indoor soccer.
My favorite handheld game of all time was this baseball game that used little ball bearings, and worked like one of those handheld pinball/pachinko type games. If you landed a ball bearing on a base, and got another ball in a certain slot you could rotate the bases, and you just counted the bearings dumped at the bottom of the game to count your runs!
Mattel Football is so cool that there’s one on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. How cool is that??
I have just got to get one of those. My sister and I used to have them all, and my parents thanked the gods for them on long car trips (although the sounds eventually drove them nuts). In fact, we played them so often they gave rise to a joke in my house–when my dad would watch football, and watch a player hustling the ball downfield, he’d shot “Move your thumb faster! Faster!!!”
