How is it possible I could've forgotten them though? What else have I forgotten? Where am I? What happened to my trousers? What's all this soft stuff in my undies...?
Tomy's Pocketeers - distrubuted by Palitoy in the UK - were pre-electronic games; wind-up handheld whimsies, which sometimes attempted to emulate popular arcade games through mechanical and magnetic means.
I mostly recall being bought them for long car journeys - in motorway service stations and the like. Though given the precision required for most of these games, it's unlikely that a bumpy car ride was particularly conducive to success, not least when being slapped by your mother for asking "How much longer in minutes?" over and over and over.
In an age before smartphones, before the Game Boy, before Game & Watch even, Pocketeers were the only way kids could enjoy on-the-go gaming. Here are the ten Pocketeers I remember best, sort of.
We used to play a version of this at school, in the back of our exercise books. We'd draw an obstacle-filled track, and make our way around it by each pressing different coloured biro into the page, and flicking it so that it left a mark. The good thing about this game is that you could play it during lessons without getting into trouble. Unlike a game called The Screaming Game, the aim of which I'll leave to your imagination.
A shrunk-down version of the popular Screwball Scramble, the aim of Steeple Chase was to guide a ballbearing to the goal - over see-saw bridges, winding staircases, and a turntable. To the best of my knowledge, this was the most complex - and certainly most aesthetically pleasing - Pocketeer ever released.
Hang on. I just remembered another version of that playground rhyme, which was taught to me by a boy called Ian Grewcock (real name). It went "Here's the church, and here's the steeple/Open the door and look - it looks just like a girl's fanny."
For added fun, you could make up your own rhyme: "Spin spin spin, go the dice! Spin spin spin goes the rice!"
"What are you doing? Why are you throwing rice everywhere?"
"Ha ha!"
"What is wrong with you? It's all over the living room. Just wait until your dad gets home."
Or, y'know, just used their prehensile tails, or something?