From slot cars to electric football!

[slothead]

All through the 60's my favorite activities were electric football and slot cars. When I wasn't down in the basement racing cars on my Strombecker track I had a Tudor electric football game underway on a card table in my room. I didn't just play games, I played full seasons with multiple teams, recorded stats for every play, totaled them for every game and season, and knew what every player had done that year. I even did a 1 page write up for every game just like the Monday morning sports articles in the paper.

I even got a cheap Super 8 camera from a pawn shop and filmed many games. I got a film editing machine from someplace and tried to put together highlights like NFL films.

Thanks for bringing back the memories! This reinforces the fact that this is the only place our passions make sense because we have so much in common.

Slothead

[HomeRacingWorld]

[ccobra]

I won't say when it was but when I playing with my brothers electric football set, the players had metal prongs which ended up snapping off after a while. The players were metal but there was something special about the quarterback and kicker but darn if I can remember what it was now.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

It was steroids and degenerate gamblers. The NFL sets come with them.

Hey have you seen the video on the Tudor website? That thing is faster than I can run. Are they all that fast now?

[HomeRacingWorld]

You can adjust the speed. We turn "the bolt" about half. Kinda like adj voltage on slot cars:-)

[arroldn]

I had the red and yellow set in your first post as a pass it on from my older cousin when I was 7. I bought a newer version when I was 17. It is still at my moms house and still works.

[slothead]

I just started watching the video on the Electric Football website - wow, who knew!? I'd heard there were people still playing it but to see grown men so wrapped up in it was odd and heart warming. I guess that's just how I look when I've got a slot car controller in my hand. Three cheers for everyone that follows their passions despite what others may think. Also, it shows what we have in common easily overcomes the ways we might see ourselves as different.

They sure look good in those replica jerseys - makes we wonder if I should have my own driver's suit to wear when racing. Anyone know where I can get a really big Dan Gurney or Peter Revson replica fire suit?

Slothead

[strangebrew]

I had one too....maybe 1958 or so............BUT.........WHERE DO YOU PUT ALL THAT STUFF????

[HomeRacingWorld]

I have an attic. Our home is well insulated up there thanks to my obsessions. :)

[BIG E]

Harry, a quick story about that football game...
Yesterday was a beautiful car show day here - with low 70 degree temps, blue skies and a light breeze - and I was selling a few things in the vendor field at the Long Island Street Rod Association's annual fall swap meet and car show. I usually attend their shows each spring and fall as a walk in customer - bright and early - and am able to be one of the first of the day to walk the vendor field looking for slot cars, model car kits, ect. It's mainly 1/1 scale cars and parts for sale, but people bring all sorts of things to sell, and for the most part I can find lots of good scale related items - on the cheap, too! Yesterday alone I came home with an Auto World HO set, a 1968 Hot Wheels board game, two original 1968 FORD (full size line and Fairlane/Torino) dealer brochures (glossy full color about 12" square), a couple of 1/24-25 scale plastic model car kits, and an original, unmolested Aurora Model Motoring HO scale Thunderjet 500 Mustang hardtop (really, complete with original dust). I don't work outdoor shows because most of the stuff I sell at model/slot car shows will get ruined in the sunlight, even when kept in the shade. I found out the hard way a few years ago!
But... a good model car builder friend called a few days earlier, he's battling the Big C and going through kemo treatments, so he's just too weak to do the show alone as he had planned. He's got lots of 1/1 and scale car stuff he wanted to sell off, so I picked him up with my SUV and set up the tables, unpacked the boxes, made signs, put out show flyers, ect. so he could just sit resting in a lawn chair at the tables and make sales. We both ended up making some good $$$ for the day, too!
Some kid had the exact same game as seen in your pictures for sale, but he had NO CLUE as to what it actually was! I explained it to him, but I'm still not sure if he got what I was telling him, as the thing doesn't have a digital interface! I thought about buying it, and then thought to myself, why? I sold off my original two TUDOR games years ago. Mine seemed a bit larger, and without the red border. The players were the type with the separate green bases and the tiny independently adjustable feelers on the bottom. Don't know if it was the one that was manufactured before or after yours. I say two games because I also had the TUDOR Auto Race game - can't believe I let that one go! Thanks for the look back to rainy days of my youth buzzin' away on the gridiron and race course!
Hope you guys continue to enjoy your game ... Ernie :>)

[bobbyraz49]

I had a Joe Namath electric football game. The footballs were magnets and you had to to try to throw it at the recievers base which was metal. Never completed passes !!! I had nore fun painting the players for different teams.
Also had a Bobby Orr hockey game. What a blast.

[BIG E]

Table hockey was a huge favorite of mine. In the late 1960's, one of my school buddies had a 1/32 scale MARX slot car set, and it was junk. So he saved his racing for when he came around the block to my house to use my big AURORA HO layouts. For fun at his house he and I played series after series on an old Canadian made Stanley Cup Hockey game, handed down to him by his much older brother. It was Toronto vs. Montreal, of course, with a white painted masonite "ice" surface and metal sides. The rod and spring drive players were stamped and painted flat metal, and could only spin in one place. We used a black marble for the puck, what a GANK! sound that made when it smashed off the goalies! Around 1980 or so, we had 8 or 10 guys in a league using four identical Swedish made Stiga brand games, with three dimensional player figures that we could paint up into our favorite NHL teams and move them from one rink to the next (original Auto World HO scale stock car numbers worked out great for this deal!). With gear drive control rods, the goalies could move and spin, defensemen could pass behind the nets, all five "skaters" could move up and down the "ice". The entire rink was one big white injection molded plastic piece, painted up like a European rink. We used wind up cooking timers for the periods, and with a little Pledge spray wax that black plastic puck would fly across the "ice". Table hockey beer league, that was fun! When I had the commercial raceway some 10 years later, local laws allowed up to three coin operated machines in the store. I had my amusements guy bring in any car related video game he wanted (he'd change them up from time to time to keep things fresh), a pinball machine for me, and a CHEXX "bubble hockey" arcade game.
It was like having a pool table in a pub. Oh yeah... there was lots of "after hours" action on that baby! -- Ernie :>)

[HomeRacingWorld]

The game you describe with the green bases started in the 60's, with 3 variations. The latest had a dial to turn in order to control the direction.



The Joe Namath game was from Gotham and had several variations.



I had the hockey too...another old game I collected :)

[ourwayband]

These are just plan COOL!!!!!!