Just flick to kick

I suppose the more obvious punchline here would be: "Have you ever considered a career as a rocking horse?" but I chose Subbuteo because of its local connection.

Subbuteo, if you're not aware of it, is a tabletop soccer game, played by very small men and a very big football. Each man stands on a semi-circular weighted base and is flicked towards the ball in the hope of hitting the ball and kicking it towards the goal without the ball hitting one of the opposing team's men, in which case posession of the ball goes to the other team. It's one of those touchstone kids toys, like Scalextric or Top Trumps, that will make any man of a certain age go all misty eyed.

The local connection? It was invented in Langton Green, a village that is now part of the Tunbridge Wells metroplex, in 1947. At the time it consisted of a 22 weighted bases, two sheets of cardboard players you could press out and put in slots on the bases, and a stick of chalk so you could mark out a pitch on an army blanket (in 1947, two years after the war, every family had several). As the years went by, Subbuteo grew in sophistication over the years to the point where you could buy painted figures for every team in the football league, plus a whole host of accessories. If you wanted to take it to its extreme you could build a stadium so big and realistic that it was no longer possible to play the game any more. When my parents owned a driving school, they had an office that backed onto the Subbuteo warehouse in Warwick Park (both buildings are now part of the Brew House Hotel).

My favourite Subbuteo accessories? From the 70's, this streaker set of one male and one female streaker, plus two pursuing policemen.

Subbuteo was killed off a few years ago by computer games such as FIFA [insert year here], but was relaunched last year by Hasbro.