The Gadgets Page

The science fiction blog, io9 had a great entry:

• io9 – My First Microchip

They listed the computer embedded toys of the early Eighties, including: Speak & Spell, Simon and Teddy Ruxpin. They forgot MY first microchip, however.

Merlin The Electronic Wizard

Merlin was a handheld game that had six different games:

1. Tic Tac Toe
2. Music Machine: A rudimentary synthesizer. The first electronic music I ever made was on a Merlin.
3. Echo, a game similar to Simon
4. Blackjack 13
5. Magic Square, a pattern game similar to Lights Out
6. Mindbender, a game similar to Mastermind

I played with Merlin for hours. Here is a family photo of my dad playing with my Merlin. He loved that toy as much as I did. That was actually a very geeky holiday year. My sister got a Raggedy Ann radio that allowed you to talk into a microphone and broadcast your voice. God, I loved that toy. You can see all of us playing with those toys here:

• Merlin The Electronic Wizard – a set on Flickr

In fact, Merlin was the dawn of the casual gaming market. I could pick up Merlin, play a couple games of Mindbender and then put it down. It predated the GameBoy by almost a decade.

I still have my old Merlin in a box in the basement. Amazingly, it still works with fresh batteries and I can play all my old games just as well as I could back on New Year’s Day in 1980.

Here is an old commercial showing how Merlin was played: