Time to play the game…

You know how much fun we had as kids, watching Saturday morning cartoons for hours and hours before our parents finally woke up and chased us out of the house? “Go play outside and get some fresh air, you’re going to ruin your eyes by watching so much television!”

Gee, thanks, mom…

Actually, it wasn’t so much going outside and playing games… not when we could bug our parents to buy these board games that were advertised on television to the point where we could remember everything about the games by rote.

Such as “Connect Four,” the game which was totally cool – so long as you were the first person to drop a chip in the center slot, that pretty much assured you that you would win the game.

I used to play “Battleship” with my friends; my strategy was to put two boats together in an L format so that when they thought they sunk one ship, they were actually firing on two ships and got confused. Unfortunately, that also meant that they could quickly figure out what was happening… and then I was out two boats in a very quick time.

Okay, we could have played chess indoors… or we could have gone outside and played capture the flag. But why do that when there was this fantastic board game called “Stratego” at our beck and call? Trust me, I’ve won several trivia matches by knowing the the military order of command from playing Stratego – a major (4) is higher than a captain (5), who outranks a lieutenant (6)…

Those were strategy games, for sure. But how about pure, unabashed “hit the button and win the marbles” games? You know… like “Hungry Hungry Hippos,” f’rinstance…

Or those classic SSP cars, with their sonic ripcord and single internal wheel o’ power. The good folks at Kenner eventually created an SSP “Smash-Up Derby” series, with cars that broke apart upon impact. Maybe next year at Lebanon Valley Speedway’s “Eve of Destruction,” we can have a live action smash-up derby between Todd Goldstein and Rocky Hardcore, how about that there?

For those of you who only knew of “Gnip Gnop” as a throwaway joke on American Dad… here’s what the game was really about. You tried to gnip your three balls through the hoop, while your opponent tried to gnop his three balls through the hoop… fun stuff.

I remember the toy company Aurora had a series of “Skittle” games, such as this one for Skittle Pool. There was also a Skittle Bingo, a Skittle Bowling and a Skittle Tic Tac Toe, and they were all introduced by actor Don Adams.

There was this board game called Hūsker Dū?, which was a variation on the Concentration memory game. Of course, I did college radio in the early 1980’s, and at that time Hüsker Dü was an alternative rock band. I wonder if Hüsker Dü ever played Hūsker Dū? Get it?

I wonder how many parents freaked out when they heard their daughter was going over to the neighbor’s house to “play doctor” with the boy next door. Trust me. Most times, they were just playing “Operation.” The goofy game for dopey doctors.

And finally, there’s that classic board game that most likely preceded eHarmony.com and the rest of those dating sites. Remember “Mystery Date”?

Ah, the classic toy commercials of our childhood. Uh-oh. Parents are coming. Probably going to tell us to go out and play. Again. Pfft.