While doing research on my next film set in the early 1980s, I ran across this advertisement in the LA Times. Chess & Games Unlimited, a six-store, Los Angeles chain ran this ad (see below) with specials that included a Horse Race Analyzer. For what the store called a "INCREDIBLE SPECIAL WINDOW" you could own this device. Its features included: microcomputer that helps analyze thoroughbred races when using the Daily Racing Form.
I initially called bulls*t! However, I then noticed it was made by Mattel Electronics and I thought of all the hours I wasted playing their football, basketball, and the baseball handheld games. All that time I was perfecting athletic thumbs, I could have been playing Mattel's MONEYMAKER and printing money!
Do you believe in a time before computers that a Mattel Electronics Horse Race Analyzer allowed the horseplayer to get THE BEST OF IT?
1981 advertisement from the LA Times
I was as dominate and would run up the score like one of Switzer's Oklahoma teams.
My two handed set shot was deadly.
I could never hit a breaking ball, but when I turned on a fastball it was like Roy Hobb--a thing of beauty!