I do not wish to make it seem that the launch of subbuteo as table soccer was a disaster or that Peter Adolph got it seriously wrong. The idea of a players' association and encouraging early adopters to contact and play each other, form leagues and so on were excellent. His own willingness to get out and join in was, I believe, genuine enthusiasm for the game and table football. The sheets of player numbers and positions encouraged identification with real players and tactical awareness.

From the business point of view he learned the lessons of Newfooty well. The mail order business meant he was paid for the game before it was sent out and he cut out the middle man. Although he did try to get shops interested in stocking the game it was not until 1955, when the business was well established, that retailers expressed any interest.

It seems that the early order myth originated from Peter Adolph himself starting with the excuse for the original delays that he was ovewhelmed with orders. This expanded in to a full blown myth about how rapidly Subbuteo took off. Personally I think a little sales patter and compression of events took place over the years. The story runs as follows.

Having placed the first advertisement for Table Soccer, Peter went to America on a long-standing arrangement to value an egg collection. He was intending to extend the trip and follow the valuation with some sight-seeing. While he was away postal orders for the new game began to arrive at his mother's house in Tunbridge Wells and she became so concerned as the pile increased she cabled her son and asked him what she should do. Peter told her to bank the money and cut short his trip to return home early. In the meantime his mother had enlisted the help of a friend, Jim 'Spud' Murphy, and it was Jim and Mrs Adolph who assembled the button sets in a room in her house. The value of the early orders was later put at around £7,500 by Peter himself which a little maths calculates back to around 20,000 orders. This seems to have raised startlingly few questions.

For a start the first three adverts did not mention postal orders or put a price on the game. They simply asked for a stamp for further information. We know with certainty that no deluge of orders landed in the first five months as the information had not been sent out. Moreover, the wording of the third advert also confirms there was no deluge of orders or why would he be promoting the natural history business. You only have to look at the first six adverts, all available on this site, to see the whole story does not fit the facts. They were all tiny adverts which it is impossible to believe 20,000 people even read. And why place the second trilogy of adverts close together in late 1947 if you are deluged with orders you cannot supply?

It has been claimed that the readership of Boys Own Paper was around 250,000 at the time but I understand it peaked at that figure. The printers were unable to get paper in 1946 and early 1947 due to rationing, as was repeatedly printed in the magazines.



Clothing was rationed until March 1949 but the general impression is that over a very short space of time Mrs Adolph popped down to her local Woolworth for the the plastic buttons. This is clearly absurd: the number of players implied by Peter's own estimate of the postal orders received is around 400,000! I do not doubt Jim and Mrs Adolph worked very hard in the summer of 1947 to supply sufficent sets to meet the orders that were coming in. Peter himself was probably heavily involved in trying to register the name Hobby and then Subbuteo, chasing suppliers, designing and testing bases, celluloid players, goals, pitches, nets etc, coming up with the new adverts,writing the first players magazine, box designs, accessories, logo and so on. Someone was accepting orders, banking the money, doing basic accounts, taking delivery of boxes, goals etc, despatching the outgoing sets and running the business.

It has never been quantified how long the button base sets were issued. They are rarely seen which implies very few were actually sold. If button bases were around even as long as the easily damaged cut-out card players would we not expect to see a hundred times more plastic bases having survived than the fragile early card players?

As early as autumn 1947 the first magazine announces that super-flattened bases in four colours are already on sale. The number of base colours increased to seven by early 1948 (no light blue until 1949). From September to December 1947 three more adverts appear in Boys Own Paper alone. This says to me that there was a drastic improvement in their ability to supply the game in the late summer of 1947. Button bases arrived in March and the period to replacement can only be accurately measured in weeks in my opinion: by autumn they were on their way out.



The table soccer game was popular and battle was well and truly joined with the revived Newfooty. The bitterness of the rivalry can be seen in the adverts over the years. Subbuteo pushes the patent and the modern design, Newfooty emphasises its earlier invention and the powerful argument to buy the original.



Peter kept his adverts relatively simple and they tended to be variations of two designs I call the Kicking Logo and the Saving Keeper. I am including a gallery of various early adverts on the site. It is interesting to note the emphasis on the Table Soccer name as people got used to the Subbuteo one we all now associate with the game. The first players' magazine offers a guide to pronunciation on the front cover and this is also included on the early pink fixture cards together with the source of the name.

One critical piece of evidence on how quickly the game developed during 1947 came in the first players' magazine in autumn 1947. It quotes the membership figures up to the end of May, so a copy date of July or August seems most likely. We also need to factor in the Subbuteo practice of items being sold long before they officially became available. I would estimate that the items mentioned below became available in June/July 1947. This extract is one of the most important in the early history of the game.



Just look at how many of the previously accepted ideas are undermined by this extract.
Super flattened bases in four colours
Former button bases
The number of teams already available
Real netting
Flat keeper bases
Pitch cloths

Button bases were on their way out after just three or four months. What does that mean in terms of the early sets? Next page please.





Flick Me! subbuteo archive peter adolph the early years