Saturday, 12 September 2015

Do hypes really die out that fast?

Remembering 9/11 yesterday happened to get me thinking about other things that were around at about the same time - and one of the things that have stuck in my mind are the "Electrifying" arcade games from around 1999.

One of them was an Uncle Fester idea - which I believe came out at around the same time as an Addams Family movie. The other was a Giant Electric Chair (I suspect that this one might not have made it very big in America because of the chair being used as a form of execution).

The aim of both games was pretty simple in that you had to hold on to 2 "metal" pegs for as long as you could while they delivered "shocks" in the form of vibrations through the pegs and into your arms. The prize was a receipt that stated how many volts of electricity you were able to stand.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find a picture of the chair version of this game, but I did find one of the Fester version:-



As far as I can remember, these were the "Must Play" games for around 2 years before they vanished entirely almost as quickly as they appeared in our amusement arcades. I can't help but wonder why they disappeared almost overnight? I understand that most fads tend to be pretty shortlived... but given the cost to purchase these things in the first place, arcade machines usually last at least a little longer than this fad did.

My initial thoughts were that maybe it'd turned out that there was some sort of accident associated with the machines - which is why they vanished as fast as they did, but I've done some research on Google and as yet I've been unable to find anything that would explain why they were shipped out as fast as they were. Past experience also tells me that the stigma of ride malfunctions and accidents aren't exactly easy to cover up, with the results being easy to find online months or even years later.

The most frustrating part for me has to be that I never did get the chance to get my receipt for either this or the chair.

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