The 2.30 from Newmarket rendered in vibrating felt

As the cod-Spanish name suggests, this game is ancient - dating from the 1920s, in fact. Several attempts have been made to capture, in game format, the excitement of horse racing (although for our money the ‘excitement’ of horse racing begins and ends with a Ladbroke’s payout). Chad Valley, redoubtable makers of toy guitars and drum kits for several generations of British youth, were the first.

The problem with this enterprise, of course, is - how to replicate the element of chance and surprise fundamental to the thrill of the turf? The answer - by exploiting the random power of the wobble. By turning an old-fashioned crank at one end, the wobbly green cloth “track” vibrated, resulting in the erratic movement of several, probably highly toxic lead, model horses frozen in mid-gallop. Some made for the finish line. Some didn’t budge. Some fell over. Nearly all fell over, in fact. But hey! That’s racing.

There was a token system of betting, but small-change-laden children certainly weren’t above acting like grown-up men of the world and suggesting they make things “a little more interesting”.

For a while, The Valley tried to extend the brand with variants, including greyhound and speedboat - speedboat? - editions, but only the original lasted through the decades, with little changing save for a reduction in the danger of the model horses to tender young intestines. For those of us too young to go on fruit machines, it was a tentative toe in the glamorous waters of that mysterious world beyond the blacked-out windows of William Hill.