Subbuteo is back!
Yes, the game I spent many hours setting up, playing and throwing tantrums over as a boy (and that includes teenager) is now back on sale after being axed in 2001. It’s true! I saw an advert on Sky Sports the other day and everything!
The game itself remains laregly unchanged. However, gone are the endless accessories and teams that I used to imagine in my dream Subbuteo stadium. There are now just five products in the Subbuteo range – the ‘Dream Team Stadium’ set, and four ‘Skill Sets’ which contain 12 players, two special player bases, a spare ball, and some kind of practice device.
The biggest change is the players. No longer are they the pressed plastic gentlemen that looked like they were suffering from bad indigestion. Hasbro (the current producers of ‘buteo) have reverted to the original flat, card/celluloid players that were around from the 1940s to the 1970s.
(image pinched from littleplasticmen.co.uk)
This does seem a bit cheap compared to the figures that were used in Subbuteo’s heyday, but I don’t think I have a single team in my old collection that didn’t have at least one player with broken legs where I’d knelt on him, so I think this can be considered an improvement. Another improvement is the pitch tensioning system that pulls the corners out to flatten the playing field, which will certainly reduce the setup time (ironing the creases out of the old cloth every time I got it out of the box was a real pain!).
There is also another reason for the flat players. Rather than buying a whole team painted with the appropriate kit, players have photorealistic images of real players on them. These are supplied in packets, with a random selection in each box, presumably for Panini style playground swappage. These card players slot in to plastic player bases supplied with the basic ‘everything you need to play’ set.
The players appear only to come from real European superstar teams, so unfortunately I won’t be seeing a photoreal Kerry Mayo on any Subbuteo pitches (this year, at least!). It’ll be interesting to see how this new collectable concept works, and I hope it helps Subbuteo stay in toy shops for years to come.
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