In 1980, Mattel Electronics released the Horse Race Analyzer, a calculator-type device that promised to help you pick winning horses at the track. Developed by a former cosmetics marketing executive and a college mathematics professor, a Mattel executive claimed you would get a better return using the Analyzer to place winning bets than from purchasing U.S. government Treasury Bills. But at an initial retail price of $100, the device failed to match the success of Mattel’s earlier handheld games. Yet the Horse Race Analyzer continued to be sold for more than a decade after Mattel Electronics itself collapsed and even made a brief appearance on a March 1987 Computer Chronicles episode.

In the studio introduction for a March 1987 Computer Chronicles episode on computers and gambling, Stewart Cheifet showed Gary Kildall a hand-held, calculator-like device that claimed to help people pick winning race horses. Although Cheifet never identified the device by name, it was the Mattel Horse Race Analyzer, an odd footnote in the history of Mattel Electronics, which itself was a short-lived subsidiary of the famed Los Angeles-based toy company.