We have some very good news to relate. A consortium lead by the webmaster of this site has succeeded in purchasing the copyright for the El Head Boardgame. We will not detail the fascinating tale of tracking down the descendents of Mr. Fuerte nor the legal wrangling that took place with the Matteo Toy, Company which is now owned by a Dutch firm. Since we now own the copyright we will be modernizing the El Head Board game for todays audience, a computer version may be in the works but that is in the far future. After extensively game testing the old version of The El Head Boardgame, we have come up with some changes that we believe may make the game more pleasing for a modern, general audience.
At long last may I present the facsimile of the El Head boardgame
Remember this is only a facsimile. There are only seven known complete El Head boardgames in the world. This is from a run of 1500. The four owners of these games guard them jealously.It was only after months of persistent and admittedly annoying efforts that I was able to get even one of the owners to speak with me through an attorney. He is a famous actor whose initials are M.B. (He has been in a few westerns) For a fee of 500 dollars I was be allowed to view and photograph the game. After I viewed the game and was preparing to photograph it, M.B. reneged on our agreement. He would not allow any photos to be taken for fear of somehow damaging the game. At first he even refused to refund any of the money but after threats of legal action and bad publicity he coughed up 200 bucks.
So the board and a few of the cards you see are facsimiles created from memory using similar images. The good news is that I have come in contact with a few other El Head collectors who have parts of the game. One collector allowed me to copy the rules and questions. Another allowed me to photograph a set of El Head cards. There is one collector out there who deals exclusively in game figurines. However he was too paranoid to allow me to even view his collection but he did send me a photo of the El Head game figurines. Unfortunately the photo was not of the best quality. I have scanned and cleaned up the photo as best I could but the figurines do not look their best.
The El Head board game was manufactured in 1954 by Matteo Toys. There were 1500 made. The creator of the game Alejandro Fuerte claimed to be a descendent of El Head's faithful companion, Lizard Boy (Dionisio Fuerte) . This claim has however never been substantiated
Fuerte hoped to cash in on the momentary surge of fame enjoyed by El Head in the early fifties due to the popular films and comic books that year. However by the time the game hit the market the fad had died out. The game sold fitfully, never making enough to offset the manufacturing costs. As per their deal, Matteo Toys paid Fuerte's royalties off by returning all unsold games. Stuck with 700 games Fuerte gave them to the Salvation Army and to Catholic Charities as a tax write off.
From all accounts Fuerte became a bitter man living marginally by working at game companies as a freelance designer and project manager. He always felt ill used, as if they were stealing his ideas for peanuts.
In the Sixties after the resurgence of popularity of the El Head character because of the Lancaster movies, Matteo Toys wanted to reissue the El Head Board game but an embittered Fuerte refused. He fought a successful legal battle to retain the copyrights to the El Head board game and to prevent it from being reissued. The legal battle drained what little of his wealth remained
Fuerte committed suicide in 1974 after being diagnosed with the Curie Factor. He rigged a shotgun to shoot him in the chest but slipped from the chair as it was fired. The shotgun blast decapitated him, sending his head to land atop his one remaining copy of the El Head Board game. The bloodstained El Head board game is one of the most sought after by collectors but it remains so far as I can determine only a legend
The El Head purist may be disappointed by the board game, since it has a scant amount of El Head lore incorporated into it and what little there is has been altered. The board game centers on the early years of the El Head saga when El Head was on the vengeance trail, hunting down and killing the men who had maimed and decapitated him. One of the changes that the board game made was in the four villains. Three of the villains from the board game, Davidovich, Bear Marks and Ryan were three of the four that had betrayed him however the game's other villain Jeff Justice Bolane was Ryan's henchman in the El Head tales.
The missing villain is Ross Irving, a African-American baseball player. Matteo Toys felt that having an African-American in a Western themed game was not suitable. They felt that having an African-American in the game would hurt sales in the South. Remember in 1954 there was quite a bit of racial strife going on what with integration of schools, buses, lunch counters and the like.
In addition to the choices of villains, Fuerte also made a few odd choices as to what El Head lore to include in the game. There are spaces for the towns of Flatbed, Utah, Jeziah and Redemption but with no explanation of what these squares stood for in El Head lore. Flatbed Utah, was the town where El Head commissioned the death devices to be built. Jeziah was a town reduced to ashes by Ryan and Redemption was the town where Ryan and El Head had their final showdown
Fuerte also included Horsemen of the Apocalypse cards, with all Nine horsemen while failing to mention that the Nine Horsemen were part of Ryan's new theology. They were made real by Ryan's madness and his radiation spawned powers. El Head was the embodiment of Anarchy in Ryan's theology.
Another card from El Head lore were the Pit cards. The Pit was the Meteor Crater in Arizona that Ryan and Bolane visited. They discovered a subterranean area filled with mutated insects. Ryan used these beasts of the pit to launch attacks against El Head.
One more card which is based in both El Head and western lore is the Lost Dutchman Mine. It is based on a mine in the Superstition Mountains which is still lost. According to El Head lore El Head found the Lost Dutchman mine and mind controlled Jacob Walzer the mine's owner. It remained a source of wealth for El Head for years.
Another sticking point for the El Head purist was in the pewter figurines used in the game. None of them represent any of the characters from the El Head tales. Instead a traditional western motif had been utilized. According to some sources Fuerte had designed several pewter figurines based on El Head, Ryan, Lizard Boy, Bolane the Snake Man, Lucifer Malice and Brimstone but Matteo Toys had rejected them all. They reasoned that children would be frightened by or just would not understand the figures. If you would like to know more about the game I have included some pictures of various cards, the figurines and the rules.
