Anyone that knows me knows I love my electronic gadgets. I keep my cell phone and iPod in my purse at all times; if I forget them at home on a rare occasion, I feel as if my umbilical cord has been cut. But I haven't always been that way. In my early adult years, I could not have cared less about electronics. And in my teenage years, things like that were the farthest thing from my mind. I guess that's a good thing because back then, there weren't too many electronic gadgets out there. There was one very cool gadget, though; I never had one, but it was very cool nonetheless. It was Merlin, the Electronic Wizard.
Merlin was a handheld electronic game made by Parker Brothers in 1978. It was the earliest and most popular handheld games, selling over 5 million units during it's initial run. It remained popular throughout the 1980's. Trying to compete with the Game Boys and other handheld games, Milton Bradley recently re-released Merlin.
Merlin was created by Bob Doyle, a Harvard PhD. and inventor who had previously worked for NASA. Merlin was a rectangular device about eight inches long and three inches wide, and resembled a big red touch-tone telephone. The play area of the game consisted of eleven buttons, and each button contained a red LED light. Four game-selection and control buttons were at the bottom of the unit, and a speak was at the top. Merlin's simple buttons and lights supported six different games: Tic Tac Toe, Music Machine, Echo (similar to Simon), Blackjack 13, Magic Square (a pattern game) and Mindbender (similar to Mastermind).
Like I said, I never had a Merlin, but a friend at church had one. She would bring it to our Sunday night youth group activities, and she even let me borrow it a few times. It was fun, but it didn't make me want to save up my allowance and baby-sitting money to go buy one. Actually, after I played it for about 15 minutes I was bored; not unlike I am with video and electronic games today.
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