Page 28 of electric football googling

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There is all kinds of stuff deep in the google pages under electric football. Lots of interesting articles and videos from electric football history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XngZSHagYbw

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Another by Jamal on page 38 http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=JIVHrqWTZrI&NR=1

Arena Ball electric football ad with Elway http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=q-fMxshpsmQ

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Page way deep...
http://home.att.net/~KRSchmidt/elfoot.htm

From the above link:

The Electric Football Set


If you ask any member of my family, they probably will tell you that, as a child, I was always able to keep myself entertained. I cannot remember a time ever that I was bored. If there was no work to do: I played. Imagination was my world. If there were no games to play, I invented one. I especially liked sports; and of all the sports, football was first. Every child looks forward to the arrival of the annual Sears Christmas Catalog, and I was no exception. Between the pages of the Sears Christmas Catalog is where my imagination met reality. Every year something new appeared that would provide fuel for more imagination. One memorable year that "something new" was an Electric Football Set. Little plastic men, eleven red and eleven yellow, on a thin sheet of metal to which was attached a vibrating motor. As the thin sheet of metal, painted to resemble a football field, vibrated, the little men would move forward. Line your teams up against one another, and they would push against each other and you had a football game. If the little man you had designated as the ball carrier was touched by a member of the team of the opposite color, he was tackled and the play ended.
This was it, I had to have an Electric Football Set. I'm sure I let Mom know my wishes. Probably many, many times. If you were carrying the Sears Christmas Catalog and accidently dropped it, it would fall open to the page with the Electric Football Set. I dreamed of setting up my own league, and having all of the teams play one another. Nothing Santa could bring that year would be satisfactory if it wasn't an Electric Football Set. Oh, there were other things I would like to have, but I could live without any of those things if I could have an Electric Football Set.
In those days, dad often had to work on Saturdays. Saturday was also the day Mom usually went to town to go shopping. On those Saturdays that dad had to work, Mom would take him to work, come back home and make sure we kids had done the chores. Then early in the afternoon she would head to town to go shopping and then pick up dad after work. Usually when this happened, I would get dropped off at the movie and mom and my two older sisters would spend the afternoon doing whatever female people do when the male people are conveniently out of the way.
On this particular Saturday, I was being punished, I guess, for something I must have done, or maybe for something I was supposed to do that I didn't. Whatever the reason, I didn't get to go to town and had to stay home alone. There was a house, a garage, a chicken house, a barn, and forty acres under my command. I was king and in charge. I think I must have been torn between taking our two dogs, Tippy and Patches, and my trusty stick horse Trigger through the now harvested watermelon patch, past the pond and rock pile and on down to the drainage ditch and rouse out them pesky injuns that were gathering there; or, reenact last night's high school football game. I had my official Roy Rogers double holster six-shooters and official Roy Rogers hat, but Trigger was no where to be found. In the middle of my search for the misplaced Trigger, I was interrupted by the sound of a honk from a car out in front of my castle. It was the mail man and he had a package.
I knew that packages that came through the mail were never any of my business. It's just one of those things one figures out. If the people at Sears had just spent a few more minutes and wrapped this package up in brown paper; well, there wouldn't have been a story here to tell. But no, they didn't wrap the package, and in big bold letters the contents were prominently announced: Electric Football Set!
Though Christmas was two months away, it was obvious to even me that this was intended to be my present. Who else in the household would even look twice at an Electric Football Set. Mom never guessed this wonderful gift for her youngest child would be delivered on the one time that I had irritated her so much that I would banned from the usual Saturday afternoon movie. Should I be bold enough to open this wonderful piece of magic? Here's the thought process: 1. I'm in trouble already. 2. Just the fact I know about The Electric Football Set, though not my fault, means more trouble. 3. Considering 1 and 2 above, what's to lose? There was no other option, so open it I did.
Trigger's hiding place was safe, the house could have burned down, the cows who were waiting outside the barn door to be let in for their evening milking would just have to wait, the chickens surely could wait just a few more minutes for their evening feeding. Time had stopped on the kitchen table in our small farm house as the red and yellow teams got the stickers that identified each individual's number. I was ready for some football and I could not be distracted by anything, not even by the family car pulling into the gravel driveway.
Mom was a reasonable person, but what she saw as she walked into the kitchen must have been unbelievable: The Electric Football Set she had secretly ordered and her youngest son united at the kitchen table. This was a scene that wasn't supposed to unfold until Christmas day. But on a cool fall evening in October, her Christmas surprise was ruined. She knew that if the shipping department at Sears had just taken the time to wrap the package with brown paper, her secret would have been safe; but no one from the shipping department at Sears was here to vent her frustration upon. She also knew that if the postman had been able to hold the package until the following Monday, her secret would have been safe; but the postman wasn't here either. Here I was, at the eye of the storm, both innocent and guilty. I'd figured there'd probably be a spanking, but a spanking was a small price to pay for an Electric Football Set; the pain would go away and the tears would evaporate, but the Electric Football Set would still be here. On this evening, there would be no spanking. The words she uttered were worse than I could ever imagine. "Pack everything back up exactly the way it was when you opened it", it was gonna be shipped back to Sears. This wasn't in the plan. I don't really remember, but at this point of desperation, I may have actually begged for a spanking rather than send the magical Electric Football Set back to Sears. I did as I was told, and the Electric Football Set disappeared from the face of the earth.
As the days and weeks passed, I took every opportunity to look in every nook and cranny in the house for mom's hiding place for the Electric Football Set. Sure, I found hidden presents; even presents with my name on them. None, however; were the size and shape of an Electric Football Set. I couldn't believe she actually sent it back. It was no where to be found.
I sent letters to Santa explaining my situation. It wasn't my fault. I prayed and prayed. If only the Christ Child could intercede for me. I pumped my sisters for information. I wasn't giving up hope, I had it in my hands. For a few short minutes it was no longer a dream in a catalog, it actually existed, but it now seemed an Electric Football Set would have to return to being only a dream.
The hour of decision came; the time on Christmas Eve when we could open presents. I was the youngest in the family, and I always got the most presents, the socks and shirts and shoes were nice, but they weren't an Electric Football Set. I was disappointed to say the least, I couldn't hold back the tears. Christmas Eve had come and there was no Electric Football Set. It was tradition for us to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Dad had a beautiful voice and was the best singer in the church choir. At this midnight mass, I prayed extra hard. As my dad sang his solo rendition of Adeste Fidelis/Oh Come All Ye Faithful, I asked the Christ Child to magically bring back the precious Electric Football Set. It was all I could think about, nothing else mattered. I couldn't hide my disappointment.
When we got home from midnight mass, I went straight to my room to cry myself to sleep. Not even the smell of mom cooking her special Christmas Eve late night breakfast could keep me from my disappointment. And then I heard her voice soft and tender say, " There's one more present under the tree, and It has your name on it. I don't understand how we could've missed it, but its there now".
My prayers had been answered; the Electric Football Set was really there under the tree. Peace was returned to the earth, and I couldn't be more happy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Whoever was responsible for this miracle, thank you.
I guess there is a lesson to be learned from all of this; Moms have more hiding places than anybody else knows.

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Totally irrevrent but FUNNY!
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news...c-football.php

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Who gathers all this info and takesthe time to add it to their sites. This is incredible.
http://www.skooldays.com/categories/toys/ty1421.htm

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Another good story.
http://obituarium.blogspot.com/2006/...llyou-bet.html

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An electric football Christmas story.
http://www.tba.org/tba_bh/bh46.html

DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS LONG AGO
By Bill Haltom

Like the late Bing Crosby, I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. However, unlike Bing, the last one “I used to know” occurred 37 years ago.
You see, I live in Memphis, a town where there are more Elvis sightings than major snowfalls. Oh, we do get an occasional winter “dusting.” Got one last weekend, in fact. But it was nothing like the white stuff the folks up in Bedford Falls get every Christmas Eve.
About the only snow we see at Christmas time in Memphis is the fake snow around Santa’s fake North Pole in the middle of the shopping mall.
But I still have warm memories of my last white Christmas. It was 1963, and I was 11 years old.
The nation was still in shock that Christmas season because in late November, President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. But for an 11 year old boy in Memphis, it was still a wonderfully innocent time.
In those days, the Christmas season officially began in early December with the arrival of a very special book, the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Everything an 11 year old boy could possibly dream of having in 1963 was found in the Sears & Roebuck catalog. There were no video games back then, no CDs, no games to be played on a personal computer.
But there were train sets, footballs and Schwinn bicycles.
There were BB guns and toy gun and holster sets that looked just like the holsters the Cartwright boys wore on Bonanza.
There were skateboards and pogo sticks and even a few hula hoops left over from the Eisenhower years.
The gift I wanted the most of all in December of 1963 was proudly displayed in full color on one full page of that year’s Sears & Roebuck catalog. It was an Official NFL Electric Football Game Set.
I don’t know what made the Sears & Roebuck NFL Electric Football Game Set “official.” Maybe Vince Lombardi or Pete Rozelle certified it as such. But it sure looked official. More than that, it looked absolutely beautiful.
The set contained not only a football field but two complete teams consisting of 22 little bitty plastic football players, each bearing a remarkable resemblance to Dick Butkus.
There were little plastic goal posts at each end zone. The goal posts were attached to the goal line because that is where official NFL goal posts were located in those days.
And there was good news for my dad. According to the ad in the catalog, the Sears & Roebuck Official NFL Electric Football Set required no batteries and came “completely assembled.” That’s right. My father did not have to worry about those three terrifying words: “Some Assembly Required.”
All an 11 year old boy had to do to have a Sears & Roebuck Official NFL Electric Football Game was to line up the little official plastic players on the little official field, put the official plug in a household electrical outlet and then push an official little red switch to the official “ON” position. When this happened, the official little metal football field would vibrate causing the little plastic men to spin around in all directions.
The end result looked more like a demolition derby than a football game, but in this pre-video game era, it was all very exciting.
The advertisement in the Sears & Roebuck catalog for the Official NFL Electric Football Game featured a picture of two very happy little boys playing the game. One was wearing an official Johnny Unitas Baltimore Colt jersey (number 19). The other boy was wearing an official Bill Wade Chicago Bears jersey (number 9).
And as I looked at the picture of these happy boys, I wanted that Official NFL Electric Football Set more than anything in life.
As I recall, it came with a pretty hefty price tag: $19.95. I knew that that would make quite a dent on my father’s Christmas budget for the year.
But I built up my courage and took the catalog to my dad. I showed him the picture of the Official NFL Electric Football Set, and I said “Daddy, I sure wish Santa would bring me this. This could count not only for this Christmas, but for my birthday and for next Christmas too.”
At the age of 11, I knew the truth about Santa. I knew Santa wouldn’t be coming down our chimney on Christmas Eve because we didn’t have a chimney at our house. But I carried on the myth, fully aware that if Santa did bring me an Official Sears & Roebuck NFL Electric Football Set, he would also make my dad pay for it.
My dad smiled, and said “Well, we’ll see if Santa Claus can bring you that.”
It wasn’t a definite commitment, but it sure got my hopes up. Each evening during the holiday season, I could hardly sleep. There were visions of little plastic vibrating football men dancing in my head.
I wasn’t dreaming that year about a white Christmas. I was dreaming about a Sears & Roebuck Official NFL Electric Football Set Christmas.
But on the morning of December 24th, 1963, something wonderful happened in my home town of Memphis. It began to snow. And snow and snow and snow. It was, in fact, a record snowfall. Some 14 inches of the white stuff.
Yes, on Christmas Eve, 1963, Memphis looked just like Bedford Falls.
But on that memorable night before Christmas, my father somehow managed to drive my mother and me through the snow to my grandmother’s house just a few blocks away. There we had out traditional Christmas Eve family dinner. My grandmother really did have a chimney, so there was a roaring fire in her fireplace.
After a wonderful dinner, my mom announced that because the weather was so bad, we were just going to spend Christmas Eve right there at Grandmother’s house, and that I would sleep on Grandmother’s couch right by the fireplace and right by her beautiful Christmas tree.
I assumed this meant that I wouldn’t get my Christmas presents until we somehow managed to get home after breakfast the following morning.
But something wonderful happened on that snowy Christmas Eve night 37 years ago. Maybe Santa came down the chimney. Or maybe Dad just had a very special gift packed away in the truck of his Ford Fairlane when we drove to Grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve.
All I know is that on the snow-covered morning of December 25th, 1963, I woke up in my grandmother’s house to find sitting at the base of her Christmas tree an absolutely official Sears & Roebuck Electric Football Set and an official Johnny Unitas jersey.
Grandmother is in heaven now. So is Mama. But one of the people who made Christmas 1963 so special for me is still around.
I will be spending part of this Christmas in a hospital in Memphis, sitting at the bedside of a man who 37 years ago helped Santa deliver a very special present to an 11 year old boy. And as I sit with my father, I will have warm memories of my last white Christmas.