Exhibition Games

[Capanther]

Ive decided to take a break from the tournaments for awhile and play some exhibition games ....my first 2 games will be 4 of the teams that ive recently picked up again......i thought id add a little tudor and nfl history to the stories....my information comes from many conversations with fellow collectors and from growing up in the 60s and 70s.....after the 2nd game i think ill just match up 2 teams i want to play and ill probably play a lot of inter conference and inter league games matching nfl vs afl and afc vs nfc....ill be switching the game boards from time to time......the first 2 games will be played on the raiders vikings super bowl 11 board.... from what i can gather it was the last the last big tudor 620 size board the old tudor made....the later versions were scaled down....the first game will feature the black helmet 1969 hogleg saints vs the green helmet 1969 hogleg eagles......the saints wore the black helmets in the 1969 pre season but the nfl made them go back to the gold helmet when the regular season started....Tudor hogleg eagles first run after the switch from bigmen to hogs featured green helmets then the eagles switched to white helmets in later hog runs.

Game 1

Saints 24 eagles 20

Good game from start to finish....the saints scored first on a 40 yard run by bob gresham and the eagles were inside the 25 at the end of if the game but ran out of time.....great former saints include : 35 gresham....17 billy kilmer....46 dan abramowitz 25 al dodd and 42 john gilliam.....the eagles featured 22 timmy brown...37 tom woodishek 16 norm snead....76 bob brown....88 gary pedigrew ....and 18 ben Hawkins.    ( Im sure i butchered some spelling in some of those names ).......next up will be 1967 bigmen rams in dark and bears in white.....after that game ill start picking random matchups on the night i play.

[Terry43]

10 hours ago, Capanther said:

...the saints wore the black helmets in the 1969 pre season but the nfl made them go back to the gold helmet when the regular season started....

This is an interesting story because Tudor wouldn't have painted the black-helmet Saints just for pre-season games. The NFL must have intended the Saints to wear black helmets for the whole season.

This is from the Full Color Electric Football book, page 75, "There is a lot of myth surrounding the black helmet of the Saints. The most repeated story has the Saints wearing black helmets during the 1969 preseason without the league being aware of the change. The helmets then become relegated to football lore after NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle quickly orders the Saints to put their gold helmets back on...

"But through the research for The Unforgettable Buzz, the authors concluded that this story falls into the 'Urban Legend' category. Anything an NFL licensee did had to be approved by NFL Properties, which had an authorized uniform chart with official colors and designs for each NFL team mounted on their office wall. The only reason Tudor would put a black Saints helmet on this Ward No. 619 game was because NFL Properties told them the Saints would be wearing black helmets in 1969. Tudor would have sent samples of the black helmet design — both on the game and the players — to NFL Properties for approval well in advance of the coming season... Bags of black helmet Saints were sitting in Brooklyn long before training camps even started."

So who abruptly changed the Saints helmet color from black to gold? 🤔 The Truth is out there...  🤫

Enjoy the Journey.   T43.    ⚡🏈♾️

[Capanther]

Maybe the saints brought attention to the rule that no one had paid attention too...but its true what you say that i would think the nfl would have had to told tudor they could make them ......maybe some New Orleans faithful made a stink about it and decided they wanted their saints to keep the gold.....i know personally i like the gold helmets better....ive always kept hog gold helmet saints in w and d jersey .....i just bought these from a friend who decided to sell his teams and i figured what the heck ....id help him out and have a rare team too....but when it comes down to it id always keep the gold helmets sets.

[Daryl Collins]

As a Saints fan, this black helmet controversy has been mother’s milk to me for a long time! I love the curiosity of it all and, yes, I do like those gold helmets better but I would be lying to you if I’d said I didn’t run victory laps around the house when the black helmet Uni-Forms came out! (Ah! The days of the 16 team Uni-Form drop!)

But I digress. Your pics of the game with the black helmets is fantastic! Would I love to own a set? Of course!! But in the bidding on eBay, it always gets too rich for my blood. I’ve thought about ordering a set of custom paints and seeing if they would consider doing black helmets. (That actually just occurred to me.) if that were to be able to happen, I’d order them right now!!

As far as eBay is concerned, I have my own wish list. 60s/70s Away Chargers, 60s/70s Home Bills, and 2016 era China Away Redskins on card. I’ve always gotta have something to look forward to, so the scavenger hunt is over half the fun!

Again, to the custom paint gurus at Tudor. Black helmet Saints. Possible?

The truth is out there….

Journey On!!

[Capanther]

Daryl ive probably had 4 sets of them ...3 white and one dark....so this is actually my 4th set....ive always turned around and sold them somewhere along the way or traded them ...as long as i have the hogs in gold helmet im happy....but ill keep eye out and at least contact you if i ever run across them....they do go for crazy money sometimes for sure ...i just bought these to help my friend out and because i paid a lot it was much less than if id had to buy them on ebay 

[nefgm.org]

I do have a set of custom painted Black Helmet Saints for sell in the NEFGM Store if anyone is interested. 

The NEFGM Store – The National Electric Football Game Museum

[Capanther]

Game 2

Bears 17 Rams 7

In 1967 tudor games created the first teams painted in the image of the 16 NFL TEAMS and 9 AFL TEAMS.....from the information i have gathered over the years the 1967 bigmen were made in 1967 and 1968. The NFL TEAMS could be purchased in both dark and white jerseys .....the AFL only came in dark jerseys except the 1968 jets who made history by winning super bowl III in their upset victory over the heavily favored baltimore colts....the games that featured the 1967 bigmen were the big 620 grass endzone browns giants game ...the 613 bears cardinals game and the small 510 colts vs packers game.....the only true AFL game was the small board that probably came out at the change from bigmen to hoglegs in late 68 and early 69.....many of the early versions featured bigmen chiefs and mixed sets of hog and big jets in white ...i completed my bigmen white jets by buying several of those games and building my 11 big jets that way .....a story i read about that makes sense is the jets were so popular at the end of 1968 that tudor had to replace the small afl game with bills and dolphins because they couldnt keep up with production of white jets because boys all over America were buying them....ok on to the game.

 

The bears and rams game tonight turned into a defensive struggle for the most part but gale sayers for the bears and willie ellison for the rams had a few shining moments and sayers and the bears prevailed 17-7.....great former bears represented include : 40 sayers, 67 George seals, 79 dick evey , 87 ed obradivich, 41 brian piccolo, 89 mike ditka, and 51 dick butkus.....the rams were led by 33 ellison, 18 roman gabriel, 74 merlin olsen, 75 deacon jones, 78 Roger brown, 50 ken iman, and 34 les josephson......i think ill stick with the big teams for a few more games ....im leaning towards a matchup between the big white jets and the big dark Washington redskins in the next game 

[Capanther]

Next up...1967 bigmen Washington Redskins and New York Jets

[Daryl Collins]

Absolutely love the original figures. So great!

Journey On!

[Capanther]

Game 3

Washington 10 new york 10

I dont think ive ever had a tie before because i usually play tournaments and someone has to advance....but im the late 60s and early 70s a pre season game or a regular season game would have ended this way....this game was a roller coaster change of momentum...the jets had a 60 yard punt to start the 2nd qt that pinned the redskins back on their own 1 yd line ...then washington led by the running of A.D. Whitfield took about 5 plays to have 1st and goal on the jets 1....but 4 plays couldnt score ...2 plays after the goal line stand namath and the jets were intercepted and washington again had great field position but missed a fg and the half ended 0-0.....the game also featured to of the all time great receivers don maynard for the jets and charlie taylor for washington who were wide open a couple times but namath and jurgenson could not connect..... Maynard did run back a kickoff for 1 td and bobby mitchell scored for washington as the game saw some scoring in the 2nd half......great former jets include: 13 maynard...12 namath...67 don herman....66 randy Rasmussen....52 john schmitt....32 emerson boozer...and 41 matt snell.... Washington featured : 42 taylor...49 mitchell....25 Whitfield...9 jurgenson....55 chris hanburger...87 jerry smith...and 72 joe rutgens.....still debating on the next matchup so ill post a picture of the next games teams when i decide.

[Capanther]

Next up

Cowboys vs browns

These browns that were painted like the 1967 bigmen are one of the most rare tudor teams because they only came in mixed sets with hogs bigmen at the end of the bigmen and start of the hoglegs....these have the extra stripes on the sleeves and socks like the bigmen but they are hogs....2 good collector friends have helped me put this team together im still missing 2 tackles but i had extra stiff arm players so i could make an 11 man team....the dark cowboys with the blue silver pants was in my opinion one of the best looking old hogleg teams...im going to try and play later tonight.