Tabletop football
Who invented it?
The first tabletop was probably developed around 1900 by Lucien Rosengart, an employee of the car manufacturer Citroën. Rosengart had no interest in using his invention commercially. The first company to produce and distribute tabletop football desks was the Swiss company "Kicker". Their devices of the same name became synonymous with tabletop football in German-speaking countries. The original tabletop, also known as the "Rosengart", was particularly popular in France.
Historic patent documents prove an Englishman to be the inventor of table football: Harold S. Thornton filed an application with the Patent Office on 14 October 1922 (GB205991A). Even the rough construction of the original table corresponds to today's tabletops
News around tabletop football
There are numerous patents and utility models for tabletop football related to the game pieces or the question of how the ?kicker? fan can get enough liquid when playing.
Pin-Shot or Tic-Tac?
Different playing techniques are known in tabletop football. The so-called "Pin-shot" is a very common in Europe. The match ball is pinched with a lower part of the foot section of the table soccer piece (front or back) and quickly pulled to the right or left to get past the opponent's tabletop soccer piece.
In the "Tic-Tac" technique, which is mainly practiced in the USA and Great Britain, the ball is played back and forth between the sides of the table football pieces on a pole and is constantly kept in motion. The goal shot is taken from the running movement when the ball is in front of an uncovered part of the goal by moving a table football figure quickly behind the table football ball. The patented ?kicker? figure DE 102014112581 B4 can do both - "Pin-shot" and "Tic-Tac". The foot area of the figure is specially designed for this purpose.
Tabletop football for the blind
The utility model DE 202014000497 U1 enables blind tabletop football players to spot how the ball rolls. For this purpose, the tabble is equipped with two sound generators. As soon as a playing piece is in possession of the ball, they produce different sounds depending on the team membership of the playing piece.
Table with dispenser
The applicant for patent DE 102012025043 B4 asked himself how to increase the entertainment value of tabletop soccer. The result was a "tabletop football machine with dispenser". The bar is linked to the course of the game by serving a certain amount of the drink after each successful goal shot until a drinking vessel is finally full. The team that scores more goals will thus be rewarded with a larger amount of the drink.
More inventions
There are many more inventions around the topic of tabletop football, for example:
DE 102015212907 A1: "Playmobil" tabletop soccer goalkeeper "with multi-axis hand-guided actuation device for moving the goalkeeper in the goal and for a ball shot through a movable leg of the goalkeeper".
DE 102012108525 A1: "Stand with movable element and kit for such a stand" - Table calendar in standalone design with spiral binding at the upper edge, which optionally releases round goal openings on the stand structure in the form of the familiar football goal wall as targets for a thread-bound table football by simply folding the calendar sheets backwards.
DE 202009049384 B4: "Zimmerspielgerät für Torspiele" - Light-guiding and luminous tabletop football figures with spring-supported base attachment, which light up in their team colour by means of an LED in the floor area or in the tabletop football figure and thus enable different arrangements of team figures on the pitch depending on the progress of play by programmable control of the colour of the figures.
DE 202008014374 U1: Play equipment with compressed air pistols attached to the edge of the pitch, which can be twisted and tilted by the players by hand and which can set a table football in motion by means of compressed air with the aim of shooting it into the opponent's goal.
DE 202006006998 U1: "Miniature competition play equipment" - Tabletop football game with magnetic tabletop football figures movable by magnets between two glass plates, the figures of one team having a head magnet and the figures of the other team having a foot magnet and the figures of one team being movable by a manually operated magnetic guide means on the outside of the upper glass plate and the figures of the other team by a manually operated magnetic guide means on the outside of the lower glass plate.
DE 202005011422 U1: "Tabletop football playing equipment and figure for a tabletop football playing equipment" - Tabletop football playing equipment with an electrically operated lowerable tabletop football lifting device in the centre of the pitch for automatic positioning of the ball for kicking, the ball being positioned in the playing field of the player entitled to kicking.
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