Several years ago at Blast From The Past we were selling a current version of the old electric football game. For those of you unfamiliar with the toy, and I’m sure there are many, let me describe it for you. It was basically a tin football field underneath which sat an electric motor which caused the surface to vibrate. You would place upon this little plastic football players all lined up with offense and defense on opposing sides. My first encounter with this toy was when our next door neighbor brought one over to play. So, after spending ten minutes lining up your teams, you would then flip the switch and the vibrating board would send the players into action. Now, theoretically there were tiny little “fingers” on each player base that would determine the direction of the figure, so that some players would block each other while the ball carrier could run down the field. In reality once the field started to shake it more or less resembled one big mosh pit, except for the one player that would inevitably drift into one corner of the end zone and spin madly about. This of course would produce hysterics and cause us to forget that we were supposed to be trying to score a touchdown.
In all fairness, if you were careful about setting your players and adjusting the bases you could replicate some sort of football action, but that was never as fun as the whirling dervish routine in the end zone. Well, back to the point of my story. One day a father was browsing the store and picked up the electric football game and told his twelve year old son that he had the toy when he was a child. No word of a lie, the boy looked up at his dad and exclaimed, “boy, you had everything!” My wife and I couldn’t help but chuckle. In an age with realistic 3D video games, this boy was impressed by such a basic toy that had been around since the 1950’s. Though, more likely than not, he probably was just thinking that his dad probably had more than he did, which we all too often feel that we don’t have enough. I’m also guilty as charged. For some reason, I don’t think I ever felt that as a youngster.
We never had everything, but we had everything we needed. Today it is just the opposite. Kids seem to have everything except what they really need, which is electric football. Quick, someone build an i-phone app!