On Ebay today ran across an auction for one of these Tomy Pocket Games. In the UK, they were called Pocketeers. I have fond memories of my dad buying them for me from the Dominic's grocery store in Palos Heights. My favorite was the 'Obstacle Course'.

This site has a huge gallery of these games. I grabbed shots of the ones I remember owning.

These shots illustrate one great thing about maintaining a site like this; instead of buying these off Ebay and having to cart them around, I can preserve the memory on a zero-mass webpage.

This was my first one, I think. You start the timer w/ the level on the left, then tried to get the ball through the maze before it ran out. When the timer ran out, a magnet engaged so that the ball would freeze in place

I really liked this one as it seemed so incredibly intricate for such a small game. In one part, you actually have to get a little boat to go across the water. It's not real water, just blue painted cardboard. But by the time you got that ball all the way to the end you kind of got lost in the thing (don't laugh!) and felt like you spent a whole day at the park going through the darn thing.

from another site: GAMEPLAY: Another of the first batch of Pocketeers, this is a really inventive obstacle-course game, where you have to guide your ball to safety across a perilous landscape including swing bridges, stepping stones, tunnels, stairs, turnstiles and open-ended boats. The section in the middle is a rotating pathway, which you have to switch round, first to connect the bridge to the stairway, and then to connect the path to the jetty where you get on the boat. The variety of obstacles makes this one of the most entertaining Pocketeers ever invented.

-- MattWalsh - 11 Aug 2003