TRIPLE FLIPS

I'm not sure how old I was, but there was a point when I finally accepted the fact that any item advertised in comic books was utterly elusive. After vandalizing countless issues with my mailing address and carefully drawn x's in tiny boxes, I realized that the cycle would never stop. All mail order transactions would inevitably collapse during one of the following..
-The Permission Stage- 75% of my plans died here.
-The Savings Period- I had difficulty grasping the concept of delayed gratification.
-Maintaining Attention- My interests often shifted to the next, new craze.
-The Followthrough- On a couple of rare occasions I had the money in hand, but coordinating all the elements.. funds, envelope, check or money order, completed order form, stamp, and a mail receptacle was simply beyond my abilities.

Triple Flips, a series of pocket-sized portable games, used an advertisement that was more intriguing to me than most. All the right themes were covered.. Monsters, Science Fiction, Disasters. There was a Creature from the Black Lagoon look-alike right in the first panel. And the boys in the ad were having a blast...

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Mission accomplished.. I wanted Triple Flips. I read the ad repeatedly. I loved the excited banter among the summer campers. One of the guys was even a little scared by the shark game. Who could blame him? But like I said, I figured it was best to put these fantastic little games out of my mind because possessing them was an impossibility.

About two years later, you guessed it.. I found an assortment of Triple Flips in "the real world;" Kay Bee toys to be specific. They were dirt cheap at three for $2.50. I was elated. Naturally, "Monsters" and "Science Fiction" were my Flips of choice. At long last I had conquered the great mail order divide.

Thanks to that day at the mall, I shall now reveal to you.. the mysteries of the Triple Flips. (I defy you to find this information anywhere else on the web!)

Here is the closed case of the "Science Fiction" edition ("Monsters" was destroyed long ago.) Positioning the slider to the desired game and pushing the lever at the bottom automatically opens the spring-loaded container to your game of choice. Kind of clever.

Contrary to the ad, there are no 3-D environments and the game pieces are generic colored tokens. The fact that they're magnetic is kind of cool though.

I always liked the past and future setup on this playing field.

I needn't tell you that the products didn't match my expectations. I got home from the mall and immediately referred to the old comic ad. Maybe I'd gotten the 'base' model or something. The initial product "close-ups" in the ad are accurate enough I suppose, but the drawing that depicts the Western game could reasonably be interpreted as a three dimensional town with a playing piece in the shape of a horse-drawn carriage...

There's no indication that this scene is part of the boys' imagination.

This led me to assume that the "Monsters" edition would probably include a tiny plastic Frankenstein, and most likely a haunted castle. All in all, the Triple Flips promotion was a textbook example of the generally misleading nature of comic advertising. I'd been warned about it, but this was my first personal experience. I only attempted to play the games once or twice. But the Flips became trophies that would eventually reminded me of my youthful search for truth.

Here's a look at the blister card. Yes, I still have it.

The back reveals even more of the games.

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