Whilst the foreign car factories were laying off staff in favour of this toy’s older brothers, kids across the land were celebrating their new-found ability to move objects around the kitchen table by a mere complicated sequence of instructions input into the Armatron’s console. Of course, anything slightly more delicate than the plastic blocks included in the box (an egg, say) would break under pressure between the rubberised jaws, so any notions of performing David Banner-style laboratory experiments were soon similarly shattered. ... more>>>

Resembling nothing more than a vehicle from Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons redesigned by Clive Sinclair, Big Trak was controlled, as the presenters of Tomorrow’s World breathlessly related, by that all-important “silicon chip”. With just a few taps on the keypad, this fully programmable beast could be instructed to move and turn in different directions, fire up its “photon cannon”, and make a couple of modish electronic noises. It was, of course, mainly used to frighten the family pet. ... more>>>

The Binatone TV Master was the first computer game experience witnessed by many Cream era households, nestling as it did in the Argos catalogue alongside the portable b/w TVs (with which it shared a parasitic relationship). Aeons before kids sat hypnotised in front of the latest Grand Theft Auto clone, sacrificing great chunks of their lives to completing the next level, this slab of circuit-based entertainment dragged us in off the streets to watch a box-shaped pixel zig-zag its way across the screen. What a choking irony, therefore, that this gatekeeper of the soon-to-be-ushered-in console era attempted to mimic a selection of sports games. ... more>>>

The tradition began with Grandstand’s Invaders From Space (we’d like to think that the name was the result of a poorly-administered Japanese translation), a bulky white unit that sported a huge “target” screen decoration, only a tiny part of which actually constituted the display. ... more>>>

Milton Bradley (which we’re still not sure wasn’t the name of that comedy alien bloke off of Fast Forward) had tried before with a plastic push-peg version of the pen and paper grid-based classic. But it was with the addition of flashing LEDs and whistle-boom! sound effects that they hit upon the deluxe, truly sought-after edition. ... more>>>

Pre-Game and Watch, the cutting edge of electronic game playing (never “gaming”, please) was led by “Only From” Tomy, who loved to package an array of red LEDs with a little joystick and two buttons in various guises. The variety of things you could get away with representing with little flashing lights was, of course, extremely limited, and only two categories really made the grade in these formative years - space battles (light on dark - perfect) and sport (balls - round, see?). ... more>>>

This early ’80s effort from Ideal is getting lumped in with the lesser-known (and earlier) Parker Bros “Stop Thief”, even though they’re not even superficially the same game, on the basis that nobody ever asked Father Christmas for two electronic crime-solving games in one lifetime. ... more>>>

200 in one! 150 in one! The not very catchy 65 in one! And 50 in one! The oscillator-obsessed cousin to the generic chemistry set, Electronic Project (a product from the on-its-sleeve-for-nerdiness named Science Fair) was a big box full of circuits, cables and dials that boasted anything from 50 to 200 possible projects for you to build, depending on how much cash mum and dad were willing to shell out. ... more>>>

If the inventor of Game And Watch didn’t retire a multi-millionaire at the end of the ’80s to a luxury mansion in the Bahamas then there is no justice in the world. For what was this toy but a perfectly weighted and targeted marketing triumph? A small, portable game that could masquerade when required as a digital watch, meaning kids could persuade parents and teachers alike that it was a legitimate scholastic tool (“But Dad, don’t you want me to know what the time is?”), Game And Watch was the logical next step for a company that had exhausted the potential of the 50m water-resistant chronograph. It was time to take the watch off the wrist and lay it on the table. ... more>>>

Dallas - the home of cowboys, oil wells and early integrated circuits as produced by Texas Instruments. Originally founded in seismography (to wheedle out those reticent little underground reservoirs of oil), TI moved into electronics in the ‘50s. A couple of decades later, the Speak & Spell was born (and the rest is history), though it was preceded by it’s less talkative cousin, the Little Professor. ... more>>>