When I was a kid in the '70s, handheld electronic games were all the rage. Here are some pics of some favorites my siblings and/or I owned:
BLIP
A dinky little PONG-like game in your hand. It actually lasted only about a month or so before it started failing. These Taiwan-made games were sold for only a few bucks and their cheap construction showed it.
ELECTRONIC FOOTBALL
Not knowing the rules of football, I had no idea how to play this. It was my brother's but we all used it. That was usually the case with these things, since, even though they were cheap there wasn't much need to have three of them. I think this one physically lasted longer than the BLIP but we lost interest in it we before it eventually would have broken.
SIMON
Now this one was really fun. A musical concentration game that got progressively more and more challenging. A testament to its popularity is simply the fact that electronic games like this are still popular to this day.
MERLIN
This too was quite popular and we loved it. This one I remember we actually would fight over so much we eventually smashed it in one of our all-out struggles for it.
160-IN-ONE ELECTRONICS CONSTRUCTION KIT
I guess 'cause I loved science my parents got me this. I'd never expressed interest in electronics per se before but this kit was really interesting. You connected wires to various leads and made little electronic tools. One tool I made was a biometric pulse emitter. It made a repeating transistor "blip" noise that was supposed to help plants grow. I put it next to a pot plant I tried germinating from seeds I got in a bag of weed I bought from the cooks at HoJo's. It didn't help.
There was another game that I really enjoyed. It was white plastic and had a grid of pressure pad squares that you pressed with a plastic little "bonhomme." I think it was a maze type game and you had electronic bleeps along with red or green LEDs that guided you along the maze that was programmed into it. When you solved one maze, it progressed to others each successively more and more difficult. Despite remembering these details about it though, I can't recall the name of it or who made it so Google is no help and I haven't stumbled across it by chance when viewing images of electronic games of this era. :(
BLIP
A dinky little PONG-like game in your hand. It actually lasted only about a month or so before it started failing. These Taiwan-made games were sold for only a few bucks and their cheap construction showed it.
ELECTRONIC FOOTBALL
Not knowing the rules of football, I had no idea how to play this. It was my brother's but we all used it. That was usually the case with these things, since, even though they were cheap there wasn't much need to have three of them. I think this one physically lasted longer than the BLIP but we lost interest in it we before it eventually would have broken.
SIMON
Now this one was really fun. A musical concentration game that got progressively more and more challenging. A testament to its popularity is simply the fact that electronic games like this are still popular to this day.
MERLIN
This too was quite popular and we loved it. This one I remember we actually would fight over so much we eventually smashed it in one of our all-out struggles for it.
160-IN-ONE ELECTRONICS CONSTRUCTION KIT
I guess 'cause I loved science my parents got me this. I'd never expressed interest in electronics per se before but this kit was really interesting. You connected wires to various leads and made little electronic tools. One tool I made was a biometric pulse emitter. It made a repeating transistor "blip" noise that was supposed to help plants grow. I put it next to a pot plant I tried germinating from seeds I got in a bag of weed I bought from the cooks at HoJo's. It didn't help.
There was another game that I really enjoyed. It was white plastic and had a grid of pressure pad squares that you pressed with a plastic little "bonhomme." I think it was a maze type game and you had electronic bleeps along with red or green LEDs that guided you along the maze that was programmed into it. When you solved one maze, it progressed to others each successively more and more difficult. Despite remembering these details about it though, I can't recall the name of it or who made it so Google is no help and I haven't stumbled across it by chance when viewing images of electronic games of this era. :(