1972 Ideal "Bing Bang Boing" commercial
There are many things to like about this 1972 Ideal toy commercial:
1. The Jean-Jacques Perrey background music.
2. The black set.
3. The announcer's voice.
4. The name of the toy: Bing Bang Boing.
5. The toy itself, which is a brightly-colorted DIY Rube Goldberg kit with lots of fun parts that you can set up in different configurations.
It's got to be a Marvin Glass creation. (Thanks, Richard!)
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Sadly, today we "protect" our kids from toys that fling metal balls through the air.
I think this video isn't a commercial, but some sort of marketing promotion video.
I like the fact that its called an "open ended action game." My first thought was "like GTA3 but..."
I also enjoyed the listing of iconic toys and games leading up to something I'd never heard of (although its criminal that this never caught on, looks like a blast.)
I miss the Ideal toy company - I remember they made a lot of stuff, like this, that had a very major impact on my brain. Hell, Mousetrap alone could be to blame for who I am today, and the art I make.
btw - Just checked ebay - no examples of Ideal's Bing Bang Boing up for auction - too bad. I should just go out to the shop and build one actually :)
No longer available?
The commercial reminds me of Animusic (http://www.animusic.com/).
I have both of their dvds, and I really enjoy them.
Oh, that's scary. Not just because I'm still a sucker for this sort of toy -- I have dreams of building my own kinetic sculpture some day -- but because this is smack dab in the middle of my natal culture. I remember looking very much like the lad in the ad.
Building it yourself: The drums are easy, of course. (They don't even have to be drums; bearings will bounce nicely off a hard metal surface too if you want a different sound, or a percussionist's practice pad might be worth trying for a quieter bounce.) Various simpler closed-loop ball-race toys are already on the market; might be easiest to cannibalize one of those for the motorized lift and possibly some other components (gather balls and then release as a group, for example) if you don't want to construct it yourself... though these shouldn't be hard to build either. The flag's a simple weight triggered latch, I presume, set to require some number of balls before it lets go.
I'm just reeling from the term "Boingo-Bucket." Maybe Mark F. and Danny Elfman were subliminally subjected to this marketing meme whilst they slept in 1972, only to have it emerge later in life.
As for me... I'm renaming the trashcan icon on my desktop to "boingo bucket" or "ruckus recycler"
I LOVED this game as a kid, GOD I wish I still had it for my son, it was endlessly entertaining. I sifted this video a while ago on videosift, and illicited many similar responses.
I want one that uses hand grenades
This was already covered once a few years ago, and the HOWTO make your own was here.
I also had one of these, though without the Krazy Krane or whatever it's called. It was pretty cool, but also pretty repetitive and not as "open ended" as you might think...
It's great to hear the ondioline in a commercial, that must have ben such a bizarre thing to hear back in the day. Like hearing the Beatles for the first time.
I like pretty much everything else about this video too. Especially those freaking rubber drums, excuse me "hum drums". They work so efficiently though. I'd love to see some really long train of them in action.
Bingle Blinger, Banglevator, Humdrum, Flicker Picker, Boingle Bucket... It's like a hodge-podge of web 2.0 services!
I love it! Somebody has got to reinvent this and market it. My 6-year-old daughter loves making "traptions" like this. Right now it's mostly long tubes with balls rolling through it. Thanks for the how to link Hexmonkey. Anyone else have other easy how to contraption ideas or directions?
Thanks.
Let me get this straight: A girl actively and equally participating in a mechanical toy/game? In 1972! Kudos Ideal..
One of my neighbor's older sisters had parts from this thing when I was a kid, but I never figured out what the heck they were supposed to do or be for. Now I know.
first thing i did was look on ebay, This game looks fun, too bad it's too long before my time.
me and my brother still reminisce about this game. until now, me and him were the only ones i know of that had even *heard* of this game. we were proud owners. now, just memories. like the dusty cobwebs of mind. misty, water-colored memories...of the way we were...
Funny, as this is exactly how the Internet operates
I had this game when I was a kid and spent hours trying to master seemingly simple tasks, but it was very frustrating because the balls bounced ("boinged") all over the place. I think there was a very small sweet spot in the center of each membrane that would lead to predictable "boings." Everything outside the sweet spot resulted in haphazard trajectories.
Damn you Bing Bang Boing!
By the time I was a ten-year old -- twenty years later -- we just had the Incredible Machine.
Across the Hum-Drum! Up the Bangle-Vator!
I had one of these. The drumheads kept breaking. It seems like I jury-rigged balloons as a replacement. I too remember it as not being as much fun as it's potential due to the random bounces.
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!
The background music:
http://www.danacountryman.com/jjp1/JJ-DC/chicksample.mp3
I also had a scaled down version of this and like Dougo I remember being supremely frustrated at having the balls bounce all over the place and everywhere but onto the next bongo thing.
...Can you imagine about ten of these sets mixed together? Talk about putting the domino stackers to shame!
This looks like more fun than human being should be allowed to have.
One now up at ebay - Bing Bang Boing.
http://mikeray.blogspot.com/
I wonder if this provided any inspiration to Pangea Software's Enigmo and Enigmo 2:
http://www.pangeasoft.net/enigmo/index.html
http://www.pangeasoft.net/enigmo2/index.html
Let the bidding begin:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Bing-Bang-Boing-Game-Skill-Set-by-Ideal-1972-Vintage_W0QQitemZ110238728085QQihZ001QQcategoryZ234QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
I first read that as "Big Bang Boing", like it was some kids' video on the beginning of the universe.
@13: I was thinking perhaps Theodore Geisel had a hand in the copy-writing...
all praise to the Doctor!
It reminds me of a game from my childhood called Cascade by Matchbox. You can find some YouTube clips of Cascade in action here. Big Bang Boing does look a lot more flexible in its setup though, and a helluva lot of fun!
Thanks for intruducing me to Jean-Jacques Perrey and his lovely goofy music!
I wonder how much expensive porcelain this toy has cracked throuhout the years.
Ahh, the avocado-green '70s.
not to mention the Harvest Gold
Maybe I'm a gigantic wuss, but there's something about this commercial, like a bunch of other 70s style TV/film I remember from my childhood (like some of those Sesame Street segments), that really freaks me out: the hyper-"stage"yness of it all, the black background (almost like they're playing somewhere in the lonely reaches of outer space, a la 2001), the druggy speeded-up portions, the weird semi-ironic music... it all feels like a bad trip. Funny, because it almost should feel nostalgic in a warm-fuzzy sorta way, but just found it felt like a bad flashback. Who got the idea that this style was a fun and friendly way to relate to kids? It feels lonely, alienated, jittery, stilted, shifty, claustrophobic and paranoid. Am I alone or does this strike anyone else this way?
I had this when I was a kid. By raising the lunch ramp up high (like on a coffee table) you could really get some distance and height with those steel ball bearings. Marbles would work too.
#37: I agree with you in principle. I didn't feel particularly weirded out by this commercial, but I agree that an absence of context within many postmodern and electronic-age expressions adds to the feeling of alienation.
For example, look at some of the ghoulishly cool stuff listed on BoingBoing, like all the death and weirdness related art. There's a distinct line on what I do and do not like in BoingBoing - that which is created within the context of the environment, and that which is taken out of context and observed as a thing in itself. On the one side we have reporting on Tibetan protests, homages to Arthur C Clarke, and an atmosphere of richness. On the other we have a piece of macabre art masquerading as a video game, an animator creating an 8-bit Xeni, and an atmosphere of starkness that is subconsciously stressful to human minds.
I believe that we were (an are) in a period of experimental starkness in art and expression, reflecting the anxieties of living in teh modern world. My prediction is that the next stage will be pruposefully familiar and comforting to counteract our anxieties, already present in, for example, comfort-food restaurants in Manhattan.
I had one of these too, and loved it.
NeilC, Keneke, when I consult my 1972 self, the music says "this is funny and quirky, and will require some degree of engagement." The all-black background is an easy way to isolate the toy, children, and gameplay so they'll read more clearly on a low-res TV screen. Speeding up part of the action just gets you through that part more quickly.