René Smith with his 1968 Otasco Tudor No. 500 Super Bowl – a game that we didn’t know existed!

It was in a conversation in the days leading up to TudorCON 14 that René Smith mentioned he had a 1968 Tudor Super Bowl game. This left us a bit puzzled, and even more so when René added that it was a No. 500 Super Bowl model. We said “hmmm….” and politely referred René to The Unforgettable Buzz. It says right in The Buzz that Tudor didn’t make a Super Bowl game until 1969.

The 1968 Otasco Tudor No. 500 Super Bowl game. It’s frame is gold and says “Super Bowl” on the top.

But we know enough from our time in Electric Football that the most dangerous words you can use are “always” and “never.” Speciality games were made, Frankenstein games were made (games with mismatched frames and/or fields), teams were mismatched, painted incorrectly – there is a whole universe of “exceptions” to the rules of Electric Football mass production. So we were pretty sure the first Tudor Super Bowl came out in 1969…but it would be foolish on our part to assume that Tudor never made one in 1968. When we finally met René at TudorCON 14, he, as promised, blew our minds. He did in fact have a 1968 Tudor No. 500 Super Bowl. It was essentially a Tru-Action No. 500 with the frame painted gold and the words “Super Bowl” on one side of the frame. It didn’t have a grandstand, and only had Tudor’s single-piece polyethylene Standard players – although they were molded in red and yellow instead of the usual yellow and white color scheme.

Page 24 – The 1968 Otasco Tudor Super Bowl No. 500.

Our brains scrambled to come up with an explanation for the game’s existence, and the answer came from the box. There was a gold “seal” on the box that said “Otasco Golden Anniversary Super Value 1918 − 1968.” Otasco ran the Economy Auto Part Stores chain, which had over 400 stores in 12 southern states by the late 60’s. It seemed pretty likely that Tudor made this special Super Bowl model exclusively for Otacso. The game was totally new to us, but there was something oddly familiar about it. So the day after the convention ended, we consulted our catalog collection. We did in fact have a 1968 Economy Auto Parts Store Christmas catalog. And there on page 24 was the Otasco Super Bowl game for $5.99. While doing our research for The Unforgettable Buzzwe saw the “Super Bowl” description — but we dismissed it out of hand thinking the Economy Auto Parts chain was being “creative” in trying to make a No. 500 more appealing. Because we knew that Tudor “never” made a Super Bowl before 1969.   Earl & Roddy

1968 Otasco Economy Auto Part Stores Christmas catalog.