There’s a kind of stupid beer commercial on TV these days that features former Dallas Cowboys head coach (and “Survivor” loser) Jimmy Johnson playing (and losing) a game of electric football to some guy named Sean.
Remember electric football? Maybe it needs to be capitalized? “Electric Football.” It was a game that was played on a vibrating metal field. The players had little metal fins in their bases that caused them to move when the field vibrated.
One of my favorite writers, Bill Bryson, said in his memoir “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” that electric football was “The worst toy of the decade (he was talking about growing up in the ’50s), and possibly the worst toy ever built.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but I remember getting one when I was a kid. At that time, the game was a pretty expensive toy for my parents to be getting for me. We didn’t have much money when I was young. But I remember unwrapping the package and setting up the game on the kitchen table. There was a cardboard “stadium,” which you could attach to one side of the field. The game looked awesome — until you actually started playing it!
I unwrapped the little packages of 24 players, painted to represent two different teams, on their little metal bases. Why 24, and not 22? I suppose so you could lose one and still be OK. The ball was a little football-shaped piece of felt. I set them up in what I thought was a plausible offensive formation and a sure-fire defensive strategy, flipped the switch that turned on a small electric motor that caused the field to vibrate, and watched those little vibrating figures dancing all over the metal playing field, going in every direction but the right one.
Then, somehow, not very long after I got it, my game field got stepped on, leaving it very unlevel. Multiple attempts to hammer out the dents resulted in a bumpy playing surface that few of the players could successfully maneuver. The game was never quite the same after that.
According to Wikipedia, Norman Sas, owner of Tudor Metal Products and Tudor Games, created electric football in 1947. It was an immediate hit. More than 40 million of the games have been sold since its creation, and new editions are sold each year.
Video football games (like Madden NFL) have sort of overtaken the electric vibrating game, but electric football still thrives and has also benefited from technological progress. The players look much more realistic now than they did in the ’50s when I got mine, but there has been very limited change in the game play.
Leagues, clubs and tournaments continue to play the game. According to Wikipedia again, the Electric Football League, headquartered in Highland Park, Illinois, held its 17th annual Official Electric Football Super Bowl and Convention in January 2011 in Columbus, Ohio. (That’s the most recent one I could find.) In that tournament, Jamel Goodloe (Auburn Tigers) was crowned national champion, as he beat Ken Allen in the championship game. Both players hail from the Michigan-based Great Lakes Electric Football League.
I went online and I found that the games are available in a variety of prices ($35 to $150 — I wonder how much better the $150 one is), and now you can order players painted to represent all of the NFL teams in both home and away uniforms, just $12 a team. So, if I want my Packers to play both home and away games with all of the other 31 teams in the NFL, I’ll have to dish out $384 for players!
College teams are also available, so maybe I’ll need another 20 teams (all the B1G schools and all the nonconference opponents for the Badgers).
Whoa! Do I need that much verisimilitude?
Oh, and by the way, if you’re a guy and in my age bracket, I highly recommend Bryson’s “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.” It’s guaranteed, laugh-out-loud funny in some places.
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