Plastic-shapes-spitting mania

Tick… tick… tick… Match shapes – and yourself – against the clock. Variously marketed by Denys Fisher in collaboration, as they so often were, with MB Games and Action GT (which sported the best ever ball-busting logo; that “GT” seemingly hurtling off all of their products at high-speed) this was a nasty piece of work, guaranteed to up stress levels in the back seats on that long and boring journey to Swaffham – that’s if you had the “Travelpax”¹ edition, of course.

The concept was simplicity itself: slot different shapes into their corresponding holes in the playing board. Easy, eh? But where Perfection really scored was with the inclusion of a distractingly loud clockwork timer. If you hadn’t got all the shapes safely home before this thing wound down, the board would ping up, spewing plastic stars, circles, squares and pieces of cheese all over the shop. And that’s when the screaming would start. More than one of us would take to playing the game without the timer on (which rather defeated the point) because it could wind us up into such a state of nervous terror.

Variation on a theme came from Mr Pop; a similar set up, but this time the game required assembly of a face (to match an illustration on the chosen card) from an assortment of random features, again against the clock. Run out of time and Mr Pop’s face would spring disconcertingly forward and shower you in more noses/ears/lips/etc. than the bloke who fills the mincing machine at the Bird’s Eye burger factory.

Thanks to such self-destructive programming, we reckon it’s probably rather difficult to obtain a full set of either game from their 1970s/80s heyday. But wouldn’t it be great to present someone with an edition of Perfection sans that one final piece? Oh, the hilarity that would ensue… maybe.