Mrs. Paul's Fish Stick Hunter

In the dog-eat-dog world of frozen fish sales you fight for any advantage you can gain. In 1983, Mrs. Paul's Fish Stick sales were down and the titular Mrs. Paul was looking for innovative ideas to gain a stronger foothold in the fish-based foodstuffs market. One night after dinner, Mrs Paul noticed her grandson playing video games, and a video game was born.

The next day she wrote up a memo about a new product: joystick-shaped fish treats named "Joy Fish Sticks." The R&D department quickly sent back the memo with a note reading "Ha, Ha! Good one Boss!" The story gets a little murky here; let's just say Mrs. Paul holds the world record for the most hires and fires in a single 72 hour period.

Sadly for Mrs Paul, but happily for gamers, Gorton's -- Mrs Paul's chief competitor -- announced "Joy Sticks" a week later. Mrs. Paul scrapped her plans for a video game-themed fish treat and instead commissioned Majorly Games to create a video game based on her products.

The resulting game featured an armed Mrs. Paul on the hunt for tasty, breaded fishy treats. Players guided Mrs. Paul through treacherous seas collecting delicious fish sticks for all the boys and girls of the world. Along with the tasty treats, Mrs. Paul had to deal with actual fish itching to exact vengeance on Mrs. Paul for the unholy things she'd done to their brethren. Luckily, Mrs. Paul was armed with a magical Fish Stick Converter Spear Gun that transformed attacking fish into fried sticks. To add a little zazz to the proceedings, Majorly Games added a hungry octopus who was out to eat all the fish sticks himself.

The game was on the market for about two years before mounting losses convinced Mrs. Paul that the world wasn't ready for a fish stick video game. But Mrs. Paul still had the last laugh; the Gorton's fisherman lost nearly 18 million dollars on Joy Sticks when Atari sales crapped out.

Back to
Stick It In The Slot