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Peter Upton's

Subbuteo Tribute Website.

Rival Games 1950s-1970s

Having produced pages on both Striker and Newfooty, it seemed reasonable to provide a quick round up of other similar football games that appeared on the market in the Subbuteo era.

This is an ongoing section of the website. I have very little detail on some of these games, sometimes little more than a picture or two. So if your second favourite football game is missing, or lacking in details then please write in and tell me about it. Alternatively, if you owned one of these games and it was a complete dog then again, let me know and I'll warn football game collectors :-)

I've deliberately avoided card games, board games, computer games, and anything with rotating rods. The games here will generally have some degree of action, and individual players.

Magnetic Football Games 1950s-60s.

    

This seemed to have been a bit of a craze in the 1950s. There were several manufacturers of this type of game, but the principle was the same. Each playing piece had a magnet on the bottom of the base, which was manipulated by a rod which went under the table. The magnets of each team were polarised  in reverse, so you could not affect your opponents players with your rod. The players were then used to push the ball around the pitch. Goalkeepers could either be on magnets like the outfielders, or on a rod like Subbuteo. The game boards were pretty similar with a smooth wooden or plastic surface, some form of fence surround, and legs to enable you to get under the pitch. 

Well known versions of this game included:

I played a version of this game at the Woking Subbuteo fair, which did not seem to match any of the sets I've seen since. So I am sure there are more to uncover.

Magnetic football is fun and frenetic, and takes a little bit of skill. If you try to move things along too fast, or go for too much power when shooting, then you are liable to leave player or ball, or both behind. Although you couldn't control your opponent's players, your reversed magnet could be used to flip them over if you were sneaky.

Time has faded these Arsenal players to a fetching pink. 
Maybe this is apt for the player doing the "teapot" impression.
They come from an early Soccerette set.

According to Richard Payne's Subbuteo book, Peter Adolph did not actually regard Bayna's magnetic football as a rival, as he thought the two games complimented each other. This might have been because they both had a rival in Newfooty, or because both games came from Kent. I've been told that like Subbuteo and New Footy, Magnetic football had a Players Association, with leagues and tournaments. Sadly I've not seen any extra individual teams for these sets (but I stand to be corrected on this point!)

Balyna Football (the other one!)

    

Just to add to the confusion, as well as their magnetic set, Toogood and Jones produced this alternate indoor football game. Unlike the big box required for the "fixed pitch" of their magnetic game, Balyna Football was sold in a long thin box. It has a cloth pitch with a metal surround and goals. The players were on hollow bases and were directed towards the ball with a spoon-like "director". The ball was a flat disc. Hopefully the image from the rules will give you some idea of how this works. There was also a Balyna Cricket game produced in a similar long box format.

A big thank you to Filip Van Hulle who made me aware of this game.

 

 

Table Association Football (TAF) 4-2-4 
Grandslam Football (1960s onwards)

    

This was a more of a tactical game than Subbuteo, as hinted by the dice included in the set. The players were very similar in size and look to Subbuteo, but they came on large wedge shaped bases. You used the straight edge for passing along the ground, and the sloped edge for chipping. The goalkeeper was similar to a Subbuteo one, but had a large clear plastic back to aid saving. This was necessary because the ball was very small, and you would otherwise have had no chance of stopping it. The teams in the box set were England and Scotland.

    

Shown above is one of the Scottish players, next to a standard Subbuteo figure. There really isn't all that much difference. As the other photo shows, 4-2-4 did have a crack at producing a team range, and the different colour bases look great. Note the number stickers on the bases. I've been advised that 4-2-4 teams could be ordered from the inventor in any colours that you required. So they were in fact, painted to order. The teams were more expensive than a Subbuteo team, but the quality of the paint finish was much higher. From the extra teams that I have seen, I think these could be purchased with or without new bases. The Scotland player shown above only has a shallow bar to be fitted in the base, but certainly by the grandslam era (see below) the bars were much deeper, and did not need to be glued into the bases. 

Grandslam Version (1970s).

    

This seems to be a "mass market" version of 4-2-4. If a company wants to produce a tabletop football game, sometimes it is cheaper and easier to buy the rights to an existing game, rather than design a new one. As you can see, the teams here were simply produced in all white and all blue plastic and look pretty awful! However, the picture does show how much of an advantage the goalkeeper is compared to Subbuteo's version. The goals and bases were identical to the earlier version.

"This is the nearest thing to live football I have ever seen." - Alan Hardaker, Secretary English Football League 1974. 

The above quote was from the rule book of the Grandslam version, which also called it "the realistic table football game", which underlined the rivalry with Subbuteo.

The pitch had black outlined "player zones" where the players operated in the 4-2-4 formation (hence the name of the game). You had to pass the ball from zone to zone. If the ball finished outside the zone, you lost possession. If it stopped on the line, the tackle dice was rolled. After a successful pass, the defender could move a player close to the ball (called a challenge). The attacker was then allowed a singe "dribble" of the ball to get in a position to pass again or shoot. Using another attacking figure to deflect the ball into the net was encouraged, and results could be spectacular. 

The bases were in two pieces with a firm plastic upper and a thin rubbery grip for the playing surface. The method of passing worked well, with the square sides giving a crisp pass, and the chip being easy to execute (but harder to control). The goals were smaller than Subbuteo, and the goalkeeper covered about a third of the goal from pitch to crossbar. As I have mentioned, this is because the ball was small, and would otherwise be hard to save.

The game does produce an enjoyable game of football, but it does have a few disadvantages compared to Subbuteo. Any game where you have to pick up the players, seems less skilled than Subbuteo's flicking. The tactical side is mostly restricted to the 4-2-4 positions, and running with the ball is not an option. Using dice for tackling, also adds a luck element that Subbuteo does not need.

Premier Table Soccer 2000.

    

After disappearing from the radar in the 1980s and '90s, here was 4-2-4 once again, reinvented for the 21st century. The game was marketed by Tom Waterman, the inventor of the game, from his base in Guernsey. Many of the components had a familiar look, including the goals and goalkeepers. The bases kept the same shape, but were now green. The playing figure had a slightly redesigned look and stance. The gameplay itself had also been tweaked. The defensive "challenges" and single "dribble" had gone. Instead, the defending players could be positioned around a position mark to prevent passing. The "player zones" had also changed in shape slightly. Overall, the rulebook is much clearer than the Grandslam version, and emphasizes the speed, skills and tactics required. In addition, the set included a coaching and instructional video.

The ease of short gentle chipping remained a strength, and the advertising for this version highlighted the ability to have proper free kicks and corners. Once again, it was sold as the realistic table football game, and also "the footballer's football game" recommended by the PFA. 

The game was displayed at the Match of the Day exhibition at the NEC Birmingham in 2000, and a website was produced to support it. Sadly, the website no longer exists, and the game has disappeared again. A real shame.

Chad Valley Big League. (Early 1970s).
The BIG Football Game with real kicking players.

     

This was more of a rival to Striker than it was to Subbuteo, with large spring-loaded kicking players. It took a more simplified route to kicking than Striker though, with a tab on the kicking leg to allow the leg to be pulled back. The set had large simple plastic goals, and a pitch which was almost identical to a Subbuteo pitch, but even bigger. The "Big" in the title also emphasized that Big League was played with eleven players a side, rather than Striker (and indeed Subbuteo's Targetman) which were only five-a-side. Actually, the Big League box includes 25 players, so you had a few extras (or maybe you could paint a kicking referee!)

The unique selling point for Big League was that the figures were supplied unpainted, and a set of paints and a brush were also included. Another item in the set was a colour wall chart featuring the playing kits of all the English league sides of the time, plus shirts/shorts from Scottish, Irish, and some International sides, to give you a few painting ideas. This is an attractive poster, and it is interesting to see which teams got the Subbuteo treatment and which ones didn't. Of course the downside to this do-it-yourself set is that second-hand you can get some very ropey sets with terrible painting. 

I'm not sure how long the sets were produced, but there are at least a couple of slightly different box layouts and I own an alternate version to the set above. Where there is a big black space on the box lid shown here, my set has a drawing of Martin Chivers, with a "Play Big League like I do" speech bubble. The wall chart in my Martin Chivers set is dated to 1973. A bigger change between the two sets is the layout of the box interior. On the set shown above, the two teams face each other in the box, whereas the Martin Chivers version has all the players facing the same way.

The DIY nature of the painting is a downside for the modern collector, but the game also had disadvantages for a 1970s child. For starters the kicking mechanism relied on rather fragile plastic and a tiny spring, but by far the biggest problem with Big League was that there were no specialized goalkeepers. You just had to paint up a standard figure as a goalkeeper. However, that was hardly ideal, and I'm not sure how he was supposed to defend the large goals. This might be because I don't have a rule book with my set.

Super Glocagoal by Atlantic (1970s)

         

Atlantic were an Italian firm, best known in the UK for producing OO scale plastic soldiers. I can remember shelves full of their figures at Beatties in Brighton, and they had a much wider range of subject matter than their English rivals with Egyptians, Greeks, Wild West etc. I never saw this footie game though, and know little about it.

Looking at the way the kids on the box are flicking the players, and then looking at this blow-up of the action pictures on the box lid suggests that this game was pretty close to Subbuteo (although the ball is smaller). In Italy it was regarded as a cheaper alternative to Subbuteo.

   

Extra teams were sold in Italy, but these were unpainted, and simply supplied in an appropriate colour plastic. For example, the Torino set shown was dark red. The figures themselves were an OO scale version of the famous Airfix footballers set, which Airfix themselves only produced in 1:32 scale. It was common for other figure manufacturers to "borrow" figure designs from their competitors. The advantage to using the Airfix figures, is that it produces some lovely detailed figures (even if the team includes a referee, linesman and trainer!). These figures would look great alongside Subbuteo's accessories. Another amusing thing is that the goalkeeper is in a diving pose, but he's really only going to be useful diving in one direction.

Interestingly, Airfix did produce a football game in the 1970s, which was in their toy range, rather than the more famous model one. Sadly, the game seemed to be more of a two-player pinball, with the players controlling paddles on the goal line. So it doesn't really warrant a place on this page.

April 2008: New information about the Atlantic set has kindly been sent to the site by Bruno Biasini, who owns the Roma set shown above. Unlike the big set shown at the top of the section, the game at this time came as half a pitch, with one team. Bruno thinks this was smart marketing because in order to have a full game you needed to buy two sets, and he owned Roma and Lazio. The team colours around the pitch-half are a nice touch.

Here are a few bits of the box illustration in more detail. You should be able to see that the (very small) goal, and the flags are different from the "Super" set shown at the top of this section. The little score boards had a sliding marker, and went up to ten. Bruno explains that the winner was simply the first one to ten goals. The set came with two different types of ball. The "Super set shows the small round version, whereas this box shows the larger ball, which was flat on side. With the flat bases, this would have given the game even more of a shove-ha'penny feel. Of course, the best thing shown in this set is the lovely little covered bench.

That's all for this page, but look at Page Two for Cup Final, and loads of Pro-Action Football !!

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