Appalling toys

[Sebastian Cobb]

I remember this excuse being trotted out in the late 70's/early 80's, some guff about it'll burn the image into the screen and break it.  The only time* I ever heard of a computer burning an image into the screen was a plasma not a CRT, about 10 years ago.


*I'm sure there are others, I just don't go seeking them out.

It won't for a bit of casual gaming but it was pretty common for ones that had been used continually in control rooms and the like.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Gotta Go Flamingo does a shit on the toilet and then you feed it the shit

There's a shitting turtle version.

Sorry, Turdle version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM8pVEXEKjo

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I had to use the B&W portable for my C64 and NES, until I was able to show the weapon switching system from Megaman II absolutely required colour.

[Sonny_Jim]

I think the sole reason why my family still owned a B&W telly in the 80's was because my dad liked to do the 'if you are watching in black and white, the green ball is just to the left of the red' joke every time there was snooker on.

Remote control toys were amazingly shit weren't they? [nb]or rather, modern ones are ace[/nb].  I remember getting a remote control skateboarding Bart that could only go forward or backwards in a circle.  It was shit.  I remember using the wheels to flick icing off a cake into my mouth.  Other than that it was shit.

Also, d'ya remember theeeeese, do ya?  eh?  EH?


Great fun in the bath

[richjj1978]

As Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64 fever began to reach peak excitement levels, i was presented with a Vic 20. A fucking Vic 20.

I didn't know anybody who had one so couldn't swap games and i wasn't allowed to use it on the colour TV in case it "broke" the TV. The enforced usage of the 14" black & white portable TV just pissed in the open wound of disappointment, a wound that it yet to heal.

I feel your pain. Commodore c16 owner. Totally incompatible with the commodore 64

[JaDanketies]

I remember when my mum got me and my brother a combined radio and 4-inch black and white TV for our joint birthday. I think I hid my disappointment well, and it was the first thing I watched Pulp Fiction on

[Sebastian Cobb]

I had a tmnt on a skateboard for scalextric. Apparently they were hard sought after, but I don't recall ever actually wanting it or pestering anyone for it. Anyway it ran quite poorly round the track.

[Glebe]

I think I had one of those sucker toys.

[buzby]

Sorry, but my mind is made up.

It was the retarded brother of the C64, colour TV or otherwise. The C64 was a thing of power, wonder and pizazz while the Vic 20 lumbered to produce diseased facsimiles of games.

I think the answer is nothing, but what could the Vic 20 do that the C64 could not? I couldn't for the life of me understand why the Vic 20 wasn't exterminated the very second the C64 became available.

It was a lot cheaper to produce as it had less RAM and used less custom chips. The C64 when it came out was very expensive - £399 at it's 1983 launch in the UK, compared to £175 for a 48K Spectrum, so the VIC-20 (and later C16) were offered as the cheaper entry level option. The VIC-20's 1981 UK launch price was £199 plus another £45 for the Datasette  but by the time the C64 was launched it was knocked down to £150 and the Datasette was bundled in for free.

I remember this excuse being trotted out in the late 70's/early 80's, some guff about it'll burn the image into the screen and break it.  The only time* I ever heard of a computer burning an image into the screen was a plasma not a CRT, about 10 years ago.


*I'm sure there are others, I just don't go seeking them out.

It won't for a bit of casual gaming but it was pretty common for ones that had been used continually in control rooms and the like.

I have seen many VT terminals in my time with screen burn of the login prompt. It used to be a big problem for CRT-based arcade cabinets too if the brightness was left turned up, and did used to happen with the 8-bit home computers if they were left on for long enough at high brightness levels (e.g places like W.H. Smiths where they left the display computers on all day).

Atari actually implemented a hardware screen saver in the 2600 VCS and their 8-bit computers that cycled  the objects currently onscreen through the colour palette after 8-9 minutes of no user input, which presumably came from their arcade experience.

[gib]

[Sebastian Cobb]

I have seen many VT terminals in my time with screen burn of the login prompt. It used to be a big problem for CRT-based arcade cabinets too if the brightness was left turned up, and did used to happen with the 8-bit home computers if they were left on for long enough at high brightness levels (e.g places like W.H. Smiths where they left the display computers on all day).

Atari actually implemented a hardware screen saver in the 2600 VCS and their 8-bit computers that cycled  the objects currently onscreen through the colour palette after 8-9 minutes of no user input, which presumably came from their arcade experience.

The ones I saw were mostly Philips 8833's with the remnants of a mode 7 burn. BBC'S as part of a packet radio system.

On the arcade tip I've seen it mostly on some of the later rear projection sets (like the big skiing game), as like you say they screw the brightness in the crt's right up. It seems like lazy design/programming to not mitigate it given the use case, the susceptibility of crt projectors and the fact it was a known issue by that point.

[seepage]

I usually got an alternative to what I really wanted for Christmas:

Spirograph? No, got you 'Paint Wheels' - paint rollers with different patterns on, zig zags, crenulations etc. Utterly pointless and boring.

Action Man? No, some spaceman action figure [major matt mason?] that 'flew' across the room on a bit of string.

Scalextric? No, Matchbox Motorway. Interesting concept but a bit useless: two long metal closed loops of spring ran under slots in the track, pulled around by an electric motor. You sticky-taped a plastic prong to the bottom of a normal Matchbox cars so that the prong engaged the spring, which would pull the cars around the track. There was some lubricant on the springs that was actually radioactive. 

[Norton Canes]

Action Man? No, some spaceman action figure [major matt mason?] that 'flew' across the room on a bit of string

I had a few of these: Mobile Action Command

[Huxleys Babkins]

There was some lubricant on the springs that was actually radioactive. 

Love that. My dad had a load of luminous modelling paint back in the day that had radioactive material in it. Probably the same stuff they used in watches and clocks:

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/radium-girls-radioactive-paint/index.html

[seepage]

I had a few of these: Mobile Action Command

I didn't have those. The one I did have was Major Matt Mason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Matt_Mason

[seepage]

Love that. My dad had a load of luminous modelling paint back in the day that had radioactive material in it. Probably the same stuff they used in watches and clocks:

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/radium-girls-radioactive-paint/index.html

The lubricant only emitted alpha radiation so probably harmless unless you licked it or something. A kid did bring in a load of paint chipped off old watches to school [why???] which caused the school to be evacuated for the day.

[JesusAndYourBush]

On the arcade tip I've seen it mostly on some of the later rear projection sets (like the big skiing game), as like you say they screw the brightness in the crt's right up. It seems like lazy design/programming to not mitigate it given the use case, the susceptibility of crt projectors and the fact it was a known issue by that point.

Why would it happen with arcade machines?  All the ones I remember used to cycle through different screens and go into demo mode when nobody was playing.  Surely that would have ensured the screen wasn't always showing the same thing?

[Sonny_Jim]

There's a few that are susceptible to it, mostly really, really old ones.  Pacman is one that springs to mind I've seen loads

https://www.google.com/search?q=pacman+screen+burn

I think early versions of Asteroids would suffer from screen burn in the high score area as well.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Why would it happen with arcade machines?  All the ones I remember used to cycle through different screens and go into demo mode when nobody was playing.  Surely that would have ensured the screen wasn't always showing the same thing?

The well designed ones did that, but some of them would still have static or frequent text appearing in the same location, the skiing game I saw had 'insert coin' in the middle of the screen even though it was only there on the in-game portion of the demo sequence.

[Blue Jam]

Found it! They were called Pow-R-Trons apparently. Hits the wall, turns into a robot, coms back! How cool is that?

http://www.the-liberator.net/site-files/robot-toys/pow-r-trons-powertrons-ertl.htm

ERTL! Anyone 'member Blurp Balls? Looking back I bet they were fun for about five minutes:



I think the Dracula that "blurped" out a heart is the one everyone 'members.



Looks like ERTL still exist and are all over the unboxing videos now. Gone digital. Blurp Balls were none more analogue so this makes me a tiny bit sad:

https://us.tomy.com/ertl

[Blue Jam]

Anyone 'member Boglins? I don't 'member this one:



Er...

(good thing "Sponk" wasn't a Blurp Ball)

[elliszeroed]

I had a blue Rock Lord. A dozen or so Battle Beasts and probably fifty Muscle Men. And an awesome Manta Force and Red Venom ship.

Happy times.

[The Ombudsman]

Anyone 'member Boglins? I don't 'member this one:



Er...

(good thing "Sponk" wasn't a Blurp Ball)

I had a boglin, not that one though. Never really seemed that fun.

EDIT to say, I recall mine had a sort of plastic bars in the cut out at the front you could slide up an down, to give the feel of a prision.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I had a boglin, not that one though. Never really seemed that fun.

EDIT to say, I recall mine had a sort of plastic bars in the cut out at the front you could slide up an down, to give the feel of a prision.

Yeah, the big ones came in a box with plastic bars. The smaller ones like Sponk came sans bars.

[I.D. Smith]

You can now buy Classic 90s Style Boglins for about 35 quid a pop* in Menkind these days. Obviously not aimed at kids now, but instead nostalgic 30-40s age group that want the Boglin they never got for Christmas 92.

*Or a bog

[Sebastian Cobb]

Anyone 'member Boglins? I don't 'member this one:



Er...

(good thing "Sponk" wasn't a Blurp Ball)

I had one very similar to that although I think the lips were redder it looked like it should glow in the dark from the non-painted insides.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I had one of the smaller Boglins and it was named Squit which isn't a whole lot better than Sponk. I ate his fingers and nose and bits of his tail and ears. It was probably just as well I didn't get one of the full-size ones which I wanted.

Here's the one I had, imagine him with many chunks taken out of him:

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The smell inside a mini boglin egg was something else. Eating beetroot next to a tire fire. No exaggeration it really smelled like something corrosive and destructive you didn't want near your face and eyes, but we huffed it anyway. A bit like that shit they put on nintendo switch cartridges to stop kids putting them in their mouths.

[idunnosomename]

ERTL! Anyone 'member Blurp Balls? Looking back I bet they were fun for about five minutes:

haha fuckin hell these things





Enticing for their gross-out quality but fail to see the actual point

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Wasn't Biff Barfball Hillary's running mate