Thetownend.com

Thought I'd get my nephew a Subbuteo set for Christmas, except you can't. Looks like after Hasbro bought it they put out a couple of cheap and tacky sets and then promptly gave up on it. Fortunately there is still a few foreign companies making equivalent products so I'll be getting him one of them instead.

Pity that Subbuteo has in effect been killed off though. Was pretty popular when I was a kid and I was even sad enough to play in a few tournaments (I was shit and always lost though). Wonder why it was the one to go when other brands are still going strong, guess the Americans buying it didn't help?

We should organise a TEF Subbuteo tournament.

i just looked on ebay, you can buy it

http://www.subbuteoworld.co.uk/

But ebay looks your best bet like bennet said

Put me down for that mate!

Don't fancy getting him something second hand which is all you'll get on eBay - Subbuteo hasn't been made for 5 years or so and even then it wasn't the proper Subbuteo from when I was a kid. Hence I'll get one of the copies instead, Total Soccer or Zeugo for example, which ironically are both better than any Subbuteo product that was ever made.

I'm actually getting excited about being able to play again, escpecially as I'll win every time as my nephew is 8 and so shit at everything compared to me - I don't do that letting the kids win thing.

I think I've still got fuck loads of Subbuteo stuff under my bed at my parents house.

So many of the players broke though...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na12OyJEgJ8

Thank you NMH - I had the link ready and was pleased to get to the bottom of the thread and see someone beat me to it.

So your not really getting it for him, it's for you

I had loads of players held together with blu tack, gave them a bit of personality.

It's probably Computer football games that have done for Subbuteo, damn shame. Me and my brothers had Subbuteo and Striker where you pushed the players head down to kick the ball. Subbuteo was the best though.

Was Striker the one with magnets?

I think a lot of my subbuteo players have match stick splints to keep them standing!

The one with magnets was a bit later.

You had a plastic footballer with a kind of tee arrangement on his foot. The game was 5 a side and had a rebound wall round the side. The version we had had diving goalkeepers. It was pretty good, but not as good as Subutteo.

I used to love subbuteo, had the whole stadium and all that shit

I loved it when i was a kid, used to squash/break the players by accident, the pitch on the carpet was never flat!

I've got loads of 50's subbuteo stuff in my attic i got from my uncle, i never use it but don't want to get rid of it on e-bay so it's just going to get even older up there.....

I've still got loads of subbuteo stuff somewhere. The problem is of course that it was never really very fun to play. However much effort you put into flattening out the pitch and pinning it down to something it would always get crumpled up and some cunt would try and cheat. Not sure I ever actually finished a match, it always degenerated into just trying to throw the ball into the little goals from across the pitch, which was a much more fun game.

 I still have about 20 teams complete in their boxes, a couple of pitches etc. Best ball was The Italia World Cup one.
Played in a Subbeteo League in my youth, now that was competitive, with loads of cheats.

We played a few Christmas's ago with mates, best football game of all time for me.

Subbuteo. Fuck me that brings back memories. When I was a kid, me and my mates had the works. Pitches pasted onto chipboard with fence surround, world cup goals, adidas Tango balls, the lot.
Some of this stuff goes for silly money nowadays. I had a 1981 FA Cup final set with the Man City and Spurs teams, and one sold a while ago for something like £180!
I think most of my stuff ended up being hoovered up by the old dear.

I used to love putting a bit if side on that ball....curling it into the net with a bit of bend.

And he draw for the subby FA Cup............Crewe won it one year :D

I got a second hand set when I was young (late 70s) and promptly repainted a lot of the teams, turned out they were old teams from the late 60's and probably worth some. Just added more and more teams throughout the 80's - some amazing kits back then. I also was lucky enough to have an astropitch which was quality.I used to love the different types of goals you could buy - world cup ones, different coloured nets.

It was the game I played most as a kid, world cups, leagues, cups, absolutley loved it.

Probably kept a lot of super glue companies in business though.

Smacking that ball through a wall......and the keeper ...on the end of a giant pole pushing it round a post.

polishing the players bases with a bit of Pledge - used to make them slideeeeeeee.............

Me and my brother had a massive set which my dad got for us 2nd hand. Glued the pitch in ply board and played for hours. Floods, hoardings the lot, we even had that bloke that dressed up in the union jack suit????? Wasn't he a perv?

And the ball...bigger than all the players.

anyone else been watching the top 100 toys on Ch4 ?? I know I am old but is it me or do they not make toys like they used to ??

Don't get me wrong - I love the whole xbox/ps3 thing but where is your subbuteo/action man/meccano of the present day ?

Used to love the addidas tango ball - plus they once brought out a sponge ball which was funny as fuck

also Roy of the Rovers had "Mike's mini men" which was a story based on table football. ah fuck I'm getting all nostalgic now

As a kid I was more interested in quantity than quality, so I ended up with a shit load of obscure Subbuteo teams bought on the cheap as no other fucker wanted to buy them. Which turned out to be a good move, sold them off a few years back and got £100+ for some of them.

Had to rack my brain a bit Flash but his name was Ken Bailey and he lived in B'mth, departed this earth now. No getting involved in the perv bit

Subbuteo was so popular the BBC made a TV drama based around it, playing for Real (1988) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397004/. I think it was rubbish.

Subbuteo is so named because the creator originally wanted to call the game The Hobby. After being refused trademark against such a generic name, he instead chose the latin name of The Hobby bird, a type of falcon - falco subbutteo (translation "smaller than a buzzard", a buzzard being butteobutteo).

Its a good job he didn't use the latin for the Australian Hobby, Falco longipennis.

I used to play Subbuteo a bit when I was a lad, but used to find it irritating, took ages to set up pitch always had creases in it and players always got stood on.

It was good, but not as good as the true kids game of kings.... Test Match

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Test-Match-Cricket-Board-Game-Peter-Pan-Playthings-/190616051475?pt=UK_Toys_Games_Games&hash=item2c619a1f13

I had Subbuteo as a kid. Many of my friends had the modern early/mid-90's alternative which had magnets under the players. I was a purest in that sense.

When I was younger though this bad boy was my favourite football related game...

[url width=793 height=594]http://oi52.tinypic.com/ht8ndc.jpg[/url]

I think most of the perv reputation he has was because he got arrested in the 60's for indecent acts in a public lavatory with members of the same sex, or so I read ages ago, bearing in mind homosexuality was illegal back then.

Mine was the Swedish variety, Stiga. Made a wicked ice hockey one too.

[url width=427 height=300]http://www.stigagames.com/news_media/9129_world_champs_71_1255_01_(w).jpg[/url]

Super cup football, what a game. It took 4 x D sized batteries and used to make a hell of a racket but charging down the wing and flipping an unstoppable shot into the far corner gave you a great feeling.

I had it when I was about 10 or 11 I guess but must of sold it at a car boot when I got older. Rather wonderfully, as a student in Stoke I found one in a charity shop for a fiver and that was easily one of the best £5 I ever spent.

Subbuteo was more about the stuff than the game as it was pretty shit really.
Now super cup football was more like it

I was thinking of that yesterday. Tomy Super Cup Football. Best table football game EVER [ost] FACT! [/ost]

I saved up to buy that and was quite tempted to get one on eBay, for shits and giggles, until I saw it must be collectable now or something.

I had one of the Super Cup Football games, loved it. Kinda sucked though, cos as the youngest of 4, and being the only boy, I had to wait for mates to come over to play it :(

He had all the accessories required for that big match atmosphere - The crowd, the dugout and the floodlights too. But you'd always get palmed off with a headless centre forward and a goalkeeper with no arms and a face like his!

So you'd smash up the floodlights and the game was abandoned and the dog would bark and you'd be banned from his house. And your traveling army of synthetic supporters would be taken away from you and thrown in the bin!

Class! Now who amongst us cannot recognise the sentiments in those lyrics?

I still have some subbuteo stuff in the garage, I even have a Bristol Rovers squad.   :(

I think my cat loved Subbuteo more than me... So many lives lost.

Subbuteo Angling - now there was a game.

not as good as subbuteo swimming

I used to watch the cricket on the BBC(!) while playing this game. Although the version I played had a picket fence on the boundary.

[url width=500 height=383]http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/images/to/toy-brokers-super-cricket-action-game.jpg[/url]

Would have been Test match, me and my mate even had official scre cards and everything and used to have a test series each summer - sad but true.