The gadget blogs are alight with word of the new Techball Remote Controlled Upright Pinball game, available to buy now at the Hammacher Schlemmer website.

To call this “pinball” is a travesty on so many levels. The table looks naff - OK, that’s to be expected from a toy. But a vertical table?!? That’s not pinball, that’s pachinko with flippers! Even the flippers are curved, presumably because that’s the only way to hit certain things on a vertical table.

The worst thing of all is the fact that it’s remote controlled. No, no, no, no, no!

Pinball is a fundamentally physical activity, becoming one with the table. That’s one thing that otherwise excellent PC simulators like Future Pinball still can’t manage. At least toy plastic tables have physical flippers - pressing buttons from a distance can’t possibly compete. Removing the flipper buttons and replacing them with a remote control is a step backwards, not forwards.

This isn’t pinball in any form I recognise.