Ack! You Knocked My Block Off!

Video games these days, particularly the fighting ones, have reached a point where players almost need additional appendages to reach a modest skill level.
The noble joystick has been replaced with a staggering array of buttons for kicking, punching, jumping, running, spinning, etc. Video games have sure come a long way since Pong.
I wonder if kids today even play board games, such as Monopoly, Life, Clue and Candyland, the kinds of games I played like crazy on steamy Houston summer afternoons.
We didn't have sword-swinging ninjas, like they do in today's video games, but we did have Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, a loud, hilarious game in which two plastic palookas smash each other in the face until one of their heads springs. It is not complicated. It's just two hand-controlled plastic pugilists popping each other's noggins until a head goes BOING!
Here's a photo, courtesy of http://www.theplaymakers.com/welcome/archives/000050.html

The game emerged in 1967, accompanied by television commercials in which a kid hollers "Knock his block off!" The red robot is known as the Red Rocker, while the blue guy is known as Blue Bomber.
Like the Big Wheel, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots was one of those popular things that most kids had but I didn't for some reason. I suppose my folks would have given me one, but I never bothered to ask. Considering that every other neighborhood kid had it, I didn't need it.
Since then, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots have come to symbolize all manner of large things pitted against one another, such as two corporate giants going at it, two heavyweight lawyers mixing it up in the courtroom, competing blockbuster television shows or just two fat guys getting into a bar fight. Here is a reference to George W. Bush vs. John Kerry: http://www.blogula-rasa.com/archives/000826.php The phrase has become so commonplace that many people - including my wife - didn't even know that the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em game actually existed. I didn't know they still were produced.
The reason I bring all this up is because on Saturday, the day my son, Curt, turned 4 years old and we had a big birthday party, complete with one of those blow-up bouncy things in the back yard, he got Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots as a gift from his Uncle Kristen and Aunt Mark.
After everyone left the party to go to their respective domestic corners, I quickly assembled Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and challenged my 4-year-old to a brawl. At first he seemed rather confused - and his mother and Aunt Becky rather horrified - by all the raucous fisticuffs coming from my Blue Bomber, but the second his Red Rocker lost his block, hilarity ensued.
And, by golly, Curt figured it out fast enough to pop Blue's block several times, laughing hysterically every time. We rocked and socked some more yesterday.
I can't imagine that the lifespan of this thing will be long, considering its construction, but that's OK, because Curt also got his first bicycle for his birthday, so it was just a matter of time before he got bored and threw in the robot towel anyway.
But for now, I look forward to going a few more rounds with Curt as well as my own childhood nostalgia.