Sometimes I just pick a page at random out of the Wish Books and post something from that page. I have been amazed how some of these items have gotten so many responses, when it was something I would not have normally posted. That taught me that I don’t always know what the readers want to see. Here is another one of those random picks.

The Magic Answer Machine was an electronic gizmo from 1977 that helped teaching kids how to spell. You put a picture into the machine and hit buttons to get the device to spell one letter at a time.

I was a tad bit jealous of my cousin for having this gizmo. I had wanted Merlin the Electronic Wizard ever since I had seen the first commercial. (Of course I had no reason to be jealous. I was one of the few kids that actually had a computer, but you couldn’t have convinced me back then!)

(I accidentally cut off the price. For those of you interested it was a whopping $24.97 in 1979. That was still a good hunk of money back then.)

Merlin could play Tic-Tac-Toe, Music Machine, Echo, Black Jack 13, Magic Square and Mind Bender and I would just day dream about all the fun I could have with it.

Funny thing is when I married my wife she had one and I have yet to try it out! (lol)

This isn’t the actual pong game, this is Ward’s version called APF. This one is actually in color. Our first pong game was black and white from, if I remember correctly, JCPenny. I couldn’t find a picture of that one, so I decided to use this one.

I loved the electronic era of the 70s and it stuck with me my entire life as I am still pretty much a computer geek today. What were some of your first electronic games?

As the 70s decade came to a close the electronic scene was just beginning to become mainstream.  I loved all the new technology that was becoming available which eventually turned into my career. Here we have the Microvision hand held electronic game.  Laughable compared to the advancements of such gaming systems as the Nintendo DS but back in the 70s this was the deal.

This was one of the first game systems I owned and I had many of the games they show on this page. Blockbuster came with the system and I also had the Bowling, Pinball, and Phaser Strike cartridges. The LED screen eventually cracked though which rendered the system useless. But I still have the original box!