#intellivision

George Plimpton was the first ever celebrity spokesperson and pitchman for a video game, for the Intellivision, between 1980-1983. 

A well known advertising pitchman, George Plimpton was a polymath and prankster who might have been one of the most well rounded and interesting people to ever live. He was friends with Ernest Hemingway, and like Hemingway, he was an author who loved sports and competition, writing several first person memoirs about boxing and competition. He also was the man who grabbed and tackled Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Robert Kennedy. He was also an actor, made movies and television, and especially was famous for being a product pitchman, mostly because he was one of a few people left by the 70s and 80s who still had that wonderful trans-atlantic accent associated with Ivy League New England (you know, the FDR, or Thurston Howell III voice from Gilligan’s Island). 

Decades after his time as a product pitchman, however, George Plimpton would become the subject of one of the strangest memes of all time. At a time when Newgrounds was the center of the meme world, an offhand comment from Joel Hodgson about a “George Plimpton’s Video Falconry” game caused a lot of people to try to find this fictional game. This is mostly because a “bit” about John Hodgeman’s persona is that, as he sounds so authoritative, he can say absolute nonsense and pass it off as true. To quote Hodgeman himself: “the idea of something sounding true is more important than it being true.” There is no George Plimpton’s Video Falconry, but there kinda could be, right? That sounds like the sort of sporty, Ivy League, Patrician rich guy thing George Plimpton would be into, right? Falconry, or polo? In reality, George Plimpton wasn’t that much of a cartoon, though. He enjoyed boxing - as Sirhan Sirhan discovered. 

Either way, there is no George Plimpton’s Video Falconry, but people on Newgrounds made fake trailers, fake art…and who can blame them, “George Plimpton’s Video Falconry” is fun to say. 

One person even took it a step further, and created the actual game, George Plimpton’s Video Falconry, as if it was an actual game for the Intellivision, down to the all-important detail of creating an Intellivision control slider: 

A couple of #Intellivision pick-ups from last weekend.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CduOGBoo3cF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=