A SHORT HISTORY OF SUBBUTEO FOOTBALL 1947 -1981
The Subbuteo Table Football game was launched in 1947 by an Englishman called Peter A. Adolph from his home in Langton Green, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The early 'Assembly' sets, which were sold by mail order, were very basic due to the short supply of raw materials just after the war years. They consisted of two cardboard teams inserted on hemispherical plastic bases, two metal framed goals with paper nets a celluloid ball and a piece of chalk. Unfortunately a playing pitch was not included, but an ex-army blanket marked out with the chalk seemed to be the solution as many people did just that.
Originally Peter Adolph, a bird enthusiast, had the intention of calling the game after one of his favourite bird's of prey 'The Hobby', but in the end he gave it the Latin name for that bird (Falco) Subbuteo. The birds head later became a Subbuteo crest in the 1970's.
In the 1960's 00-scale, three dimensional plastic figures arrived on the scene providing the game with a more realistic feature than that of the 2D cardboard predecessor.
The first version of this figure is usually known as the short-sleeved heavyweight and was in production for around 5 years or so, reaching reference number 55.
The figure then changes around 1965 to what is probably the most recognised design of any Subbuteo player - the Classic Heavyweight. Along with these new, more attractive figures, came a lot of fashionable accessories such as floodlights, advertising hoardings, plastic fence surrounds, T.V. Towers, etc.
During the 1970's, whilst the team charts starting creeping up towards the 300 mark, the accessory range also continued to expand with the introduction of the green and tan grandstand, terracing, black scoreboard etc. providing the richer amongst us (I'm wasn't one of those) with a means of creating your own 'real' stadium.
Then around 1978 or 1979 a new figure (The 'Zombie' - so called due to it's lifeless look) that could be painted and assembled by machine started to take over from the Classic Heavyweight figure, as they were finding it difficult to produce enough teams by hand to meet their customers requirements.
By the early 1980's the 'Zombie', which was not a well liked figure generally, had been replaced by the new Lightweight figure. The advantage of this new figure was that it had the ability to be machine printed with very small logos and detail.
This brings me to where roughly I stopped collecting at around the age of 14 or 15, until I discovered the internet about 5 or so years ago and revived my love for the game, deciding to put together this collection that I am now posting on this site.
Hope you all enjoy the site and thanks for taking the time to browse through it!