Halfway through the second period of last week’s Allen Americans game, a bunch of players got tangled up in the offensive corner. As I watched them push and kick and whack at the puck (and each other), a smile came to my face. I was imagining a long metal rod protruding from behind the goal and a 12 year-old boy working that pole to free the puck from the corner. Another 12 year-old is pushing a metal rod at the other end of the ice trying to steal it back. Meanwhile, the players are just spinning in circles.
Despite the exciting game on the ice, my mind had wandered back to the days of playing Bobby Hull Hockey in my friend’s Gary’s basement. Bobby Hull Hockey was a table top hockey game that used rods to control players along a track in the “ice.” The playing surface was about 2’ x 3’ and included 5 players per team plus a goalie and a rolling puck.
I remember Gary calling me on his birthday to come over and play the shiny new game. A few kids had old hockey games with missing players and bent rods but a brand new game…well that could create a buzz in the whole neighborhood. The game lasted for years and filled many idle hours for us in high school.
Gary’s game came from the third generation of mechanical hockey games. The earliest model was built by Donald Munro in Toronto around 1933. The game was made of wood and was given as a Christmas present for his children at the time. Munro later built a small number of these wooden games for the Eaton's department store in Toronto. They were an instant success and stayed in production until 1955.
A plastic version was introduced in the early 1950’s and then the first “modern” version of the game was released by the Eagle Toy Company of Montreal, according to the fan website Table Hockey Heaven (www.tablehockeyheaven.com). Eagle Toys sold the metal games through the early 1960’s until the company was bought out by Coleco Toys in 1966. A big push for toy safety in 1971 spelled the end of the familiar tin men in favor of a mostly plastic game.
Like its cousin electric football, table hockey has never completely died out. The Table Hockey Heaven (THH) site lists over 60 tournaments in the U.S. and Canada for 2011 with the Stiga American Championships scheduled in late December. Stiga, a Swedish game manufacturer, is the official game of the NHL and only game to be used in most competitions although some U.S. tournaments allow classic games as well.
Serious fans of the sport on THH (and there appear to be many) have forums and online chats to discuss strategy and swap parts from old games. There are even music videos that feature close-up action and highlights.
No discussion of table hockey would be complete without mentioning bubble hockey games. These games were larger versions of the home games made for arcades. They were encased with a large plastic bubble or dome to keep the puck from getting lost or stolen. The most popular version made by Chexx in the 1980s recreated the Miracle on Ice between the U.S. and Russia.
With the realism of video games such as NHL 2011, Bobby Hull hockey is a dinosaur. Still, if I had that game today I am confident that it would only take a few phone calls to create a buzz in our neighborhood – at least among the fifty-somethings.
As for the Allen Americans, they won that game and the series and I look forward to seeing them again this weekend. How does Yellow Horn Table Top Hockey sound?
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