Prototype, One-of-a-kind and rare Mattel games and variations:

These first two images are of two extremely rare Mattel handheld games. The first game is rumored to be the first Mattel Football ever made (from the assembly line), painted in metallic gold paint. The Basketball is the one-millionth Basketball game made actually plated in 24k gold (inside and out...). These games were awarded to a Mattel executive (Howard Cohen) during a couple of award ceremonies celebrating the incredible success of these games (Howard was the source of the first 4 games listed here, having kept them since his days at Mattel). I have a picture of Howard receiving the Basketball game while still attached to it's wooden plaque (which has, sadly, long been lost) in the Trivia & Stories section. The Basketball game actually feels like it's made of metal, and is significantly heavier than a normal Basketball. The Football game doesn't feel quite the same, I suspect a cheaper gold-plating was done on this game (as mentioned above, it seems like a gold paint rather than a plating process).

Do I have these? Yes, the first 3 are part of the Handheld Museum.


This third game is the only existing working prototype of Mattel's Soccer in dark forest green. Mattel originally wanted to use this color for the game, but it was determined that the color pigment was too costly, so they went with the more common brown color instead. On the back of this game, 'SAMPLE NOT FOR SALE' is molded into the pastic where the instruction sticker goes. Also, if you look at the second picture next to the game, you will notice that the little soccer ball buttons are actually painted onto basketball buttons (you can just make out the outline of a basketball). It seems that a limited number of these forest green Soccer games were released overseas (although they have normal soccer buttons). I've received reports of one found in Germany and another country (damn it, can't remember... Switzerland I think). I don't see these Mattel games forsale from those countries very often anyway, so it's possible that most of the Soccer's that wen't overseas were this green color...

This is the 1,000,000th Football game, presented to Howard Cohen of Mattel by Rockwell Microelectronics (the company that made the inards of this game) on Dec 13th, 1978. It's mounted to a large, clear trophy-style plaque. Picture provided by Jake Freedman who purchased it off Ebay from Howard in March, 2000.

The following are several different variations on the Battlestar Galactica game:

Missile Attack and the non-Battlestar Galactica Space Alert. (Even though it says Battlestar Galactica on the box, notice that the game itself only says Space Alert). The game does look just like the picture. This is a transitional piece, few were made just after obtaining rights to the Battlestar Galactica name.

This is just the label of a special promotional Battlestar Galactica game obtained via mail order from US Magazine.
I currently know of the existance of two of these (this one, and one I saw on Ebay a couple of years ago).

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