A 1948 college game between Columbia and Penn. Compare this photo with the early Tudor Tru-Action Electric Football games below. (From The Unforgettable Buzz ©Corbis)

Electric Football is 65 year old in 2014, a landmark we’ve been highlighting this fall. The game has come such a long way in that time, with so many changes along the way to make just “a toy” be as realistic as possible. The very first game that Tudor put out in 1949, the Tru-Action No. 500, looks pretty crude to the modern eye. But at the time it was a realistic marvel.

1949 Tudor box.

And even in those early day Tudor President Norman Sas knew that realism was the key to the game. All you had to do was look at the box. Let’s compare the Tudor’s early boxes with the photo above from a 1948 Columbia-Penn college football game (we do this in Chapter 4 of The Unforgettable Buzz).

An early 1950’s Tudor box.

All pretty similar scenes? This was no accident. From the very start, Tudor thought realism was very important in Electric Football. And they continued to think so throughout the early days of the Tudor No. 500.

 Eventually technology made it affordable to put an actual photo on a box, which Tudor began doing in 1962 with the Sports Classic No. 600 model. This was the first Tudor box which actually showed an Electric Football game. And the Drummond brothers in the photo do a great job of looking excited about Electric Football. You knew there was hours of fun just waiting under the lid.

1962 Tudor Sports Classic No. 600 model.

A box art classic from Lee Payne. These great boxes, and the thought that went into them, illustrate why Tudor was the dominant company in Electric Football.

Earl & Roddy