Attention Video Athletes! If we even dared refer to ourselves as "Video Athletes" these days, the humiliation we would endure would be horrendous. We're not fat, balding middle-aged losers who run a website, HELL NO! We are "Video Athletes" and you will now kindly address us as such!

Come on, all of you CCC Video Athletes! Time to get on the couch for more Doritos arm curls! Let's work on increasing the size of that gluteous maximus you're sitting on! If you can still see your belt, Video Athletes, you aren't trying hard enough! Quick!! To the fridge so that we may drink down another video athlete elixir of Dr. Pepper!

How many kids signed up for this thing and then got the crap beaten out them at school? "Hey Video Athlete! Come here so I can smash your head into the locker again, and see if I can beat my high score!" KRASH!! BASH! I bet you the nerd in the picture got a few beatings. Hell yeah! The tagline, "Go Ahead! Call Attention To Yourself." was quite possibly the last thing you would want to do if you were labeled a "Video Athlete".

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that no one on the board of directors at the American Video Athletic Association weighed less than an Austin Mini with a dozen drunken Shriners in it. If you look at the small print you'll see that each AVAA member received a T-shirt, Membership card, Video Athlete Manual and quarterly newsletter. What do you think was in that Manual? Maybe they explained just what in hell a "Leisure Time Advantage" was.

You + Pac Man Shirt = LOVE! "What a great way to show the women at the bar that I'm a real go-getter!" How many idiots fell for this ploy 20 years ago? Of course, this was before the Internet, so these poor dumbasses had to place their order through the mail, which means by the time they finally got it, Ms. Pac-Man was in and Pac-Man was just so "last year". There have been no actual historical accounts of anyone getting lucky because of a T-shirt emblazoned with videogame characters. If that was the case, there would be a helluva lot more nerd babies running around.

The Pac-Man Shirt: A One Act Play

Hot Woman: Say, I like the way you advertise that you love playing video games a lot.

Idiot: Really? (I knew buying this shirt would pay off!)

Hot Woman: Yes really. You may love Pac-Man, but do you know how to love a woman?

Idiot: Pardon?

Hot Woman: Let's go to your place and make mad, crazy,wild, passionate love.

Idiot: But...I ummm....live with my grandma. And she'll be home watching The Price is Right.

Hot Woman: Look, did you buy that shirt just to trick me into falling madly in love with you?

Idiot: No. (YES! It's working!! It's the best $7.95, plus $1.25 shipping and handling, plus 6% sales tax because I live in PA, that I ever spent!)

Curtain closes. The End.

Fasten Your Couch Seatbelts! Do I even have to make fun of this? I remember walking into a store and seeing people standing around gawking at this game, as if the television were really just a portal to space. Back then I remember thinking, "It's just so realistic!" as if I had any idea what travelling through a green hallway in outer space was really like. Star Strike for Intellivision has one claim to fame: It finally put to rest the argument of whether the Earth was round or flat. It turns out it was neither. It's oblong, like an egg.

Who was the marketing genius behind this ad anyway? In space, it's generally recommended you go a little faster than 165MPH because it's very emasculating when a screw that John Glenn dropped in 1969 on the first space walk, rockets past you and gives you the finger. Considering the space shuttle orbits Earth at approximately 17,500 MPH, I'd hate to be the guy trying to drag race it while flying through space in his living room. "Come on, I can crank this baby up to 165 MPH! Let's see what you got under the hood, Armstrong!"