Mr. Mouth

My cousins had two games that never stayed on the shelf for long. One was Hungry Hungry Hippos, which everyone has heard of. The other was Mr. Mouth, which people remember less, if they remember it at all. We would rotate between them on the floor of their basement, and the noise level was about the same no matter which one we picked. We all played to win. The version of Mr. Mouth we played was the yellow head version, not the frog that came later. I didn’t think about it then, but both games had Japanese routes into the American toy market and reached kids in the United States within two years of each other. One became a household name. The other did okay. Eventually changing its face and becoming a part of an interesting court case involving Pac-Man.Mr. Mouth was developed by Tomy Kogyo Co., Ltd. in Japan. The inventor named on the US patent is Takao Matsumoto. A Japanese priority date of July 4, 1975 appears in the patent record, and Tomy filed for US protection on June 23, 1976.…