TV Cream Toys Lite. Steve Berry

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       See also Up Periscope, Computer Battleship, Chutes Away

Way before The X Files, back in the mysterious 1980s, part-work magazines such as The Unexplained and telly shows like The Crazy World of Arthur C. Clarke¹–he invented satellites, you know–cashed in on our periodic fascination for paranormal phenomena. Strange how, in cycles of almost exactly 20 years, ESP, spontaneous combustion, spoon-bending and all that bollocks inexplicably suckers in an entirely new generation. One might say that the regularity itself is almost…supernatural. Woooo!

      Further back in the mists of time, in 1974 to be exact, Charles Berlitz wrote a book called The Bermuda Triangle. Then, in 1981–by complete coincidence–Barry Manilow had a Top 20 hit of the same name. Spooky, huh? In the intervening years, MB had cashed in handsomely with this ships ‘n’ storm cloud ludo variant.

Yet even at a young age, when our experience of triangles was limited to early maths lessons, school band practice and Quality Street,² we spotted the one thing lacking from this game. The board was square. The cloud was–erm–acoustic-guitar-shaped (and we’d love to have been sitting in on the design meeting for that one). Even the ‘shipping route’ around the game was just some random meandering.

      That aside (and ignoring the very fundamental imprudence in setting up a merchant-shipping operation in the middle of an area renowned for strange disappearances), it was a fun game. Move your fleet around the board, trading for bananas, oil, timber and sugar, and try to avoid the ominous, foreboding, magnetic cloud that wants to eat your ships. Simple.

      Various ‘spoiler’ tactics could be employed (blocking your fellow players’ ships from each dock), but none was more effective than bribing whoever was moving the cloud to spin it just that bit too fast, thus preventing the ominous ‘click’ of magnet on magnet and keeping you in the game for another go. Many Top Trumps and sticker collections would unaccountably vanish under the table when the Bermuda Triangle rolled into town.

      Incidentally, theories that the strange occurrences of the real Bermuda Triangle are caused by aliens sucking boats and planes out of the sky with giant magnets have not yet been disproved. But then, as the great Arthur C. Clarke himself said, ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’³

1 You must remember it, surely? No? Oh, alright, it was actually called Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, but we’d love to have seen the auld fella fetch up on Top of the Pops singing ‘Fire’. That would’ve been fab!

2 The green ones. You can also buy posh chocs in triangle-shaped boxes Toblerone doesn’t count–technically, it’s a prism.

3 He’s the president of the H.G. Wells fan club, you know.

       Big Trak

      Futuristic battle tank and apple cart

       See also Star Bird, Speak & Spell, Armatron

Resembling nothing more than a vehicle from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons redesigned by Clive Sinclair, Big Trak was controlled, as the presenters of Tomorrow’s World breathlessly related, by that all important ‘silicon chip’.¹ With just a few taps on the keypad, this fully programmable beast could be instructed to move and turn in different directions, fire up its ‘photon canon’ and make a couple of modish electronic noises. It was, of course, used mainly to frighten the family pet. Pretty good value for £20.

      The novelty was that it was ostensibly capable of navigating a path around cumbersome household objects–assuming no-one had actually moved any of them while you were busily punching in the required sequence of movements–usually a case of trial and error. Big Trak worked best when its route avoided shag-pile carpet, inclines and anywhere outdoors. According to the manual, programming distance travelled was calculated in noncommittal units of ‘roughly 13 inches’, while the angle of rotation ‘may not be enough to make the turn you want. Or it may be too much.’ You want vagueness? MB Electronics delivered it in spades (which themselves were probably of wildly indeterminate size).

Used in conjunction with the Big Trak Transporter (yours for only another £15), Big Trak was rumoured to be able to ferry objects around the house–maximum load: ‘about one pound’.² Promised innovations that never materialised were voice synthesis and additional accessories (there was a mysterious unassigned keypad button marked ‘IN’ on the keypad for just this purpose).

Not to be outdone, Kenner Toys came up with Radarc, another twenty-first-century-esque remote-controlled tank. СКАЧАТЬ