In an age of high-tech games and gadgetry, it's nice to hearken back to the ridiculously low-tech splendor of TV Pow. A Flintoid at Toys Are Good Food has some fond memories of the game that was almost totally devoid of strategy, hand-eye coordination, cunning or guile, but heavily dependent on your ability to yell into the phone:
"You send in the postcard, they call you on the phone, and you use the phone — your voice, man — to blow up alien spacecraft. A highly advanced shooting game, similar to Space Invaders is displayed live on TV, and you would shout into the phone, "POW" to activate your laser (the thin white block) and kill the aliens (the thick white blocks). If you kill enough aliens, you win."Of course, that's not really how it played out. Kids would be taken aback by their sudden fame of being on TV live during little house, and would whisper "pow" too softly to activate the voice technology. Or, things would swing the other way, and you'd have thirty seconds of a kid shouting "POWPOWPOWPOW" at the top of his little lungs. This was frickin' genius in the post-pong/pre-atari world."
Special thanks to Cara for reminding me of this gem.
