You Gotta Feel It…IT’S ELECTRIC!
12.18.08So the other night I took a break from my regularly scheduled self-mutilation to knock out a bit of Christmas shopping online. You know you’re in a great country when you can buy gifts for people and masturbate in the exact same chair. Anyway, I was cruising a popular retail website when I saw this:
That, shitheads, is an electric football table. I say it that way because if I hadn’t caught the alleged ass-end of its existence in the early 80s, I’m not sure I’d be able to distinguish it as anything other than a little metal football field (kinda like a scale model of the old Meadowlands turf in the 80s, but just as hard). But check it, the field vibrates! So not only can you play a simulated game of football on it, but then when you’re done, your girlfriend can use it to get herself off. Everyone knows you aren’t getting the job done.
But yeah, I guess the classics are coming back yet again, so if your dad is looking for a new way to neglect his wife or if you’re thumbs get too blistered from playing Madden, this might be a decent gift option. Just don’t expect any player in the game to run any better than Shaun Alexander does in real life.
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/global/images/default-avatar.jpg){kind=avatar}
![[image]](http://cdn.ksk.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2011/08/punte-red-green-burst-650-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.ksk.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2011/07/patrick-willis-shakey-150x150.jpg)
@Will Leitch’s Unfinished Novel Says:
Dude, that was my wall you were staring at!
/brushes bangs back
I remember Stretch Armstrong. That was a big bundle of barely stretchable rubber-man. It worked wonders on my soon-to-be-discovered upper arm masturbatory muscles. I also dug the Rockem Sockem Robots. The sound they made when you connected with the uppercut to pop their heads up, something like “KKrrrrrgghh”. And yes I had a Super Toe. I think I killed him going for the 65 yard, Tom Dempsey record breaking field goal. I may or may not have cut off the end of his foot to emulate the actual Tom Dempsey.
But my true childhood hero was Major Matt Mason. I still am a junior astronaut.
Thanks for the memories, Punter.
Stretch Armstrong, anybody? That was kinda cool. But yeah, Rock Em Sock Em Robots was much cooler.
Oh man, the memories. You would painstakingly set all your little guys up in formation. There were no affiliations of teams or players on our setup. We must have had NFL pre commercialize everything game.
Then plug it in, and like some have mentioned you might get:
a) do si do of teammates
b) dude would do 180 and head for your brother’s endzone while he cackled at you
c) mothers would all run into each other, and jam up the middle and just vibrate around looking nothing like football
d) once in a blue moon, dude would head for my endzone and make it through the vibrating defense to touchdown land.
Yes, the paper triangle football three point game was more reliable continuous fun with less aggravation. My dad even built a little plywood field for us to set up on.
@ Deux Deux Deux: NICE
The little football game with the dots used to piss me the fuck off!
I think we’re missing the subtle sales point in changing it from Electric Football to Vibrating Football. Hint: Your mom might not feel so neglected after all.
Every red-blooded american man owes the Electric Football game a debt of gratitude:
From the New Yorker’s fascinating article about Dogfish Head Brewery, re: the origin of the 60/90/120 Minute IPA:
“The turning point came in 1999, when [Sam Caglione ,founder of Dogfish Head] was watching a cooking show on television. The chef, who was making a soup, was saying that several grindings of pepper, added to the pot at different points, would give the dish more flavor than a single dose added at the beginning. Not long afterward, at a Salvation Army store, Calagione came across an old electric football set—the kind with a playing field that vibrates to send miniature players skittering across it. Back at home, he found a five-gallon bucket and drilled some holes in the bottom. He laid a pair of wooden blocks on the football set, put the bucket on the blocks, and strapped the whole thing together with duct tape. (“Pretty high-tech M.I.T. stuff,” he says.) Later, when his kettle was boiling, he put hops in the bucket, perched his contraption at a slant above the kettle, and set the game vibrating. Soon, a steady stream of hops was falling through the bucket onto the playing field and sliding into the kettle.
The beer born of that experiment, known as 60 Minute I.P.A., is still Calagione’s biggest seller.
@JDLRA: I was always into Tecmo Bowl growing up so I tried to use Bo Jackson as much as possible to run people completely off the screen, hence my bias against vibrating football. I thought nothing could ever top Madden 93, especially since I used Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smiff to completely piss off everyone I played.
Off-tackle left, off-tackle right, Hail Mary to Irvin – TOUCHDOWN!
That was essentially my unstoppable playbook.
Supertoe – Check. Rock’em Sock’em Robots – Check (BTW, greatest game ever.) Electric Football – Check. Electronic handheld Football (With the dots that you moved up and down across the screen) – Check.
Shawn Cassidy hair – Check. Staring in awe at the Farrah Fawcett poster on the teenager next door bedroom wall – You betcha.
The 70′s ruled, bitches.
UM – i saw one at a Marshall’s yesterday
Under the little plastic bases of the players were four plastic prongs that came into contact with the electirc “playing surface.” I used to think that by adjusting the angle of those things that you could actually control what the players did. The best players you had were the ones that you could count on to go in a straight line, not to the “concession stand”, as we called the corner of the field where most players seemed to congregate after about two seconds.
Now you kids get off my porch!
/ pulls pants up to tits
“if you’re thumbs get too blistered from playing Madden”
Please tell me you did that on purpose.
Ah, the wonders of the internet. A quick search and of course you discover that there are people out there who take even electric football way too seriously.
http://www.miniaturefootball.org/
@ Kordell: Nah, unfortunately his arm snapped off after a game that involved 92% passing plays.
@ Kid Presentable
Does the McNabb piece dry heave when the game is on the line?
Boogie woogie woogie.
(Seriously? Not a single pickup on the classic bar mitzvah audience participation jam? Shame on you all.)
I bought the Eagles edition, but the Andy Reid piece snapped the field in half. Piece of crap.
@ j4b
I only wish SuperToe was Camel Toe on steriods, but alas, he was the plastic football dude you smacked on the head and he would kick field goals insane distances through these tiny uprights that were always coming apart. The harder you smacked him on top of the head, the longer he would kick it. You know, sort of like Jeff Reed now. As for vibrating football sucking, well my friend, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It helped me kill a great deal of time in any otherwise boring childhood. You know, before I learned to masturbate.
Shitheads? I didn’t come here to be insulted by the site’s foul-mouthed proprieters.
Oh, wait. I did. Carry on.
Does Electro-Braylon Edwards catch the ball more than his real-life version?
I remember playing this game, carefully setting up my formation and then quietly praying that my running back doesn’t turn around and race in the other direction…
FUCK!
@Johnny Damon: had Superjock football and soccer–both full of awesome.
Is Super Toe an extra hyped version of camel toe? If so, then that’s what I’m talking about.
No? Well, um, yeah…vibrating football sucks dude.
Does the Cardinals version come with a beer funnel to use with underage Barbie dolls?
They still make this thing?
Though I don’t know this from experience, I don’t think it would be very effective even as a sex toy. Humping it doesn’t look like a viable option.
And I wonder why, on the item itself, the word “Vibrating” is so much larger than the word “Football,” as if the vibrating is the big selling point. That game where you flick a folded-up piece of paper that looks vaguely football-shaped through the vaguely goalpost-shaped hands of your opponent on the other side of a table is more fun than this looks to be. Nice to see that the NFL allows only quality products to use its logo.
We only ever dreamed of having a Super Toe, as we did for Rock’em Sock’em Robots. We got a used pair of the plastic pugilists, but they were in the trunk of my dad’s car when it went over a cliff (true story).
Boogie woogie woogie
Ahhh…. man the memories. As surely one of the older (does that also make me more perverted?) loyal readers and occasional posters on here, I can’t tell you the joy I had as a kid waking up to one of these under the tree. The plays were always fucked, and having your QB throwing with the same accuracy as Kyle Boller trying to throw that cloth football never worked, but it still was the greatest gift ever for a kid growing up in the 70s.
/dick joke
/wonders if anyone remembers SuperToe
Hochuli game piece? You bet!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FQNdkocpgx8/R2FMHorT1fI/AAAAAAAABNA/ww9yrLeO8LE/s1600-h/He-Man.jpg
I always enjoyed the way the little men would inevitably hook arms and dosey doe together around the field.
/kinda gay
Electric Football… where you run the Wildcat formation EVERY PLAY
Not good for coke snorting.
I really expected to see more Shaun Alexander posts when I clicked on “Running Aimlessly for Sport.”
I had this, it was the Giants/Broncos Super Bowl set. It was fucking terrible. Instead of using it as a game, my brother and I used it to beat the local Haitian over the head, because it was the only way to teach him that being different is not ok!
Nothing like waking up on Christmas to the Electric Pro Bowl.
I got this for christmas when I was 7-8 years old, best gift ever! i think it was my parents’ compensation for not letting me have video games as a little kid
I think Holmgren uses this as the basis for his offensive and defensive game plans: scatter, turn wildly in one spot, or fall down. Failing that, run a draw.
Is this item for sale at any non-evil retailer?
Do they have the Ed Hochuli game piece available yet?