I collect board games. Well, ok, board games are ONE of the things I collect. (Lets be honest, I collect a lot of things.) Not the modern board games you can get in Argos or Toymaster, but original board games from the 70s and 80s. I get them from charity shops, so quite often they are missing a piece or two.
(Incidentally, Ebay is great for picking up spare pieces for old board games, but it can sometimes be more expensive to buy one spare piece than to by another copy of the same board game, and you get LOADS of spare pieces if you do that!)
Anyway, this love of board games started in the late 70s for me. I remember playing a few classics with my family, like Cluedo, Monopoly, and Frustration, but I also had quite a few obscure games (some not necessarily of the “board” type) like Purple People Eater, Professor Nod and his Turtle Race, I Vant To Bite Your Finger and Smuggle come to mind first.
Purple People Eater was essentially Operation, but vertical. You had to use metal tongs to extract little plastic people out of the mouth of a jelly-covered, metal-lined mouth of a monster. If you touched his lips while reaching in to rescue a helpless person, he would light up and buzz so loudly you would be afflicted with ongoing tinnitus for at least the rest of the weekend.
Professor Nod and his Turtle Race was a board game, but which came with a separate plastic bust of what looked like an educated elderly professor. You had to roll a dice and move your turtle around the board, first to the end wins.
At various points on the board there were bridges that you could cross to hasten your journey, but you had to ask Professor Nod permission to cross each one. At the lower part of the front of the base of the professor there was a card slot into which you could slide a card (provided with the game), and doing this made the professor either nod his head forwards or look to the side, giving you a Yes or No reply.
Inevitably someone would reach a bridge and have to ask the plastic effigy for permission.
“Please, Professor Nod, can I cross the bridge?”
*Inserts card*
*Professor shakes his head*
*Cue the inevitable tantrum, usually from me*
In I Vant To Bite Your Finger, you had to make your way around a graveyard. The graveyard was the board at the bottom, but there was also a large plastic mechanical Dracula figure with a clock below him overlooking precedings. You rolled a dice, then turned the clock that number of clicks. At random points during the clock’s cycle Dracula’s cape would swing open meaning he had caught you. You then had to put your finger in his mouth and press down the mechanism on the back of his head to see if he would “bite” you. (It was two felt tip nibs.) Again, terrifying!
Smuggle was a card game in which you had to try to pay as little tax as possible by smuggling items through security. The cards had pictures of jewels, clothes, piles of money, and the usual things that criminals would try to take through an airport. You took a few cards then tried to lie to your fellow players about how few contraband items you had. It really was the sort of game that, looking back on it, perhaps wasn’t setting the best example for future adults.
But what did you play? I went onto the socials and asked “What was the board game you and your family used to play most in the 80s? Did you have regular game nights? Was anyone in your family a really sore loser?”
@FoxMakes – Twitter
Cluedo.. Brother in law took it very seriously and did not like me taking too long for my turn, maybe he was afraid I’d beat him?Monopoly was also taken seriously by both brothers in law, rules debated every five minutes and I frequently got bored.
Man, I loved Cluedo! Monopoly is one of those games that is great if you’re winning, but a nightmare to feign interest in if you’re losing.
@Twinny421 – Twitter
Mum, Dad and I regularly played Trivial Pursuit Genius Edition but there was one evening where we had set up Monopoly. I only ever played it once as that evening Dad eventually took a penalty kick with the board. Seems Mum was too good at it.
Never really got into Trivial Pursuit, but I had it on the ZX Spectrum and it was easy to cheat on that! But yet again, Monopoly claims another sore loser!
@sian.is.tired – Threads
Downfall, Frustration, Rummikub, Humbug, Operation, Connect4, Scrabble, Mousetrap, Cluedo. Didn’t really have regular games nights.
Mostly used to play card games of a Sunday afternoon
What a fab range of games! I’d have loved to play at your house back in the 80s!
@kyfr23 – Threads
Boggle, Rummikub, Clue, Uno, and Skip-Bo are the first that come to mind. No real sore losers other than a bit of a sibling rivalry. I do remember my brother before making any moves in Clue just guessed the right trio of answers and getting it right. We played again since the first game took nary a minute.
I’ve only recently got into Boggle. I’m really bad at anagrams but getting better thanks to Wordle.
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