Golfball Races
Begin with a bucket of balls,
Not ordinary balls,
Golf balls.
Round. Hard. Dimpled.
Better if found in the weeds around the golf course
Your cousin lives near.
Dirty? OK. It gives them a rugged character and this is a rugged game.Take five of them in your hand.
Place them on the floor.
Randomly.
Line them up in single file.
Now roll them from left to right.
The first one to cross the finish line wins the heat.
Who ever is in first after five heats wins the race. Do not have favorites, be totally impartial.Keep records.
Statistics.
As the years pass, legends appear.
Create the lore.
Hear the cheer…
'Titleist' was the champion throughout the 60's…
Next favorite:
Marble Football
Start with 11 marbles of like color,
pick one to be the quarterback.
Get an opposing team of a different color.
Find a suitable carpeted football field on the floor.
Put the two teams down.
Begin game- smash them together.
If the opposing team touches the quarterback,
he is tackled.
Quarterback of course tries to make a touchdown.
Running and passing.
(The quarterback passes himself through the air'
if he 'hits' a receiver, he is 'caught'.)
Do not have favorites, be totally impartial.
Continue until time is up.
Have many teams. Keep score.
Have division standings.
Create novel playoff systems.
As the years pass
great teams become legend.
Hear the stadium crowd roar...
My earliest favorite:
“My Adventurous Journeys with Cracks in the Walls'
While my sister tortured me with Cooties...
Oh, what?
You meant ‘board games’ and not ‘bored games’?
My mistake… let me start over:
The Sixties-
Not much to choose from-The Game of Life and Monopoly
Ruled the land of boards, Other than the ancients- checkers and chess. Backgammon hit a little later, then faded into fad obscurity along with cribbage.
Scrabble existed, which the girls always won.
and for some reason they liked Twister...
My kiddies came in the late eighties-
As did the simple fare-
Dynamite, Flying Pirates, Grape Escape, Hungry Hippos,
The Mousetrap offshoots…
When the kids got a little older I had to spend time with them separately, by the sexes:
The girl-
A shopping mall game, electronic talking Mystery Date,
Pound Puppies, Polly Pockets, Beanie Babies
And the perennial Barbie-
Yes, a soap opera in every box...
(I wrote down some of her stories in hopes of marketing them to daytime T.V.)
I had one couple, she the other couple,
But my guy had eyes for her girl…
Boy, did he get in trouble!
But I’m a boy, so the rest of this revelry will be about ‘boy' toys and games:
First,
before the board games,
The vehicle-oriented fare dominated-
Matchbox cars, (which I employed to teach the kids
counting, colors, organizing... they were definitely
ready for Kindergarten!)
Hotwheels, (which conveniently fit into my old floppy drives...)
Micromachines, Megaforce,
Anything military,
And by the hundreds, of course…
HO trains complete with landscaped table… (now a castle land for Mage Knights)
Then the action figures burst upon the toy aisles-
First 3 1/2" G.I Joes,
Then Ninja Turtles, Batman-
where the Batcave kept reappearing every few years
disguised in different paint jobs (like a Connoisseur didn't know!)
Marvel Comic and DC comic figures, Power Rangers
With all the morphing zoids
(and obtained via Toys R Us parent-tug-matches- I'm just glad I missed the Cabbage Patch Doll madness With lines around the toy stores...)
Aliens with these great miniature comics, Jurassic Park,
Star Wars of every episode and then some…
All complete with vehicles, compounds, and so many tiny accessories
I had to have ‘little pieces’ boxes…
Ghostbuster, Godzilla, Crash Dummies,
The Terminator, Robocop, Judge Dredd,
Gundams...
Can’t forget the classic 3” 1/35th scale plastic army men-
The WWII Americans, Germans, and Japanese
Battling for floor space… it would take a whole gymnasium
to have a battle with them all now... But taking them out to the construction sites with the huge dirt piles was a treat...Cowboys and Indians, American Revolutionary War men, the Alamo, Civil War infantry and cavalry,
Knights, Trolls, and Goblins (pilfered from the ‘party favors’ section!)
With castles of various types… We'd carefully set them up, admire them, then knock them all down in a pitched battle, then put them away...
The tiny 1” 1/72 scale guys-
Romans and Celts, Waterloo,
Vietnam, the Russian Front…
The higher quality 'Britains' figures- 7th Cavalry and Apaches, Civil War, Cowboys and Indians... all in all I think we were responsible for the deaths of several billion plastic souls, may they rest in pieces...
Then the strategy board games hit
That came with hundreds of pieces-
Risk and Axis and Allies tops here,
Where 99% of the fun was purchasing the armies
And setting it all up. Then one turn and we were done!
The floor games-
Crossbows and Catapults and
Weapons and Warriors,
Where the battle quickly turned into
Shooting at each other’s head…
Boing! Hilarious! Ouch!
Fireball Island, Crash Canyon,
Torpedo Run- where when a ship was hit
It would ‘blow up’…
No wonder my boy, at age seven, when asked the lame
predictable question,
'So what do you want to be when you grow up?' responded
'I want to be a Dad!'
-He thought Dads just spent all their time playing with
their kids and toys!
The talking electronic games had their heyday-
Talking Battleship, Battle Cry! The Omega Virus…
Ranging from the simple to that which only the kids could figure out…
The Wife?
She kept getting us ‘intellectual’ fare-
Little Engineer’s set, tinkertoys, Brio Mec3…
Build your own service station…
We smiled… said ‘thank you’…
and waited until she left, she feeling satisfied that she had just civilized and enlightened us...
Legos of every type- space, pirates, star wars,
Police, and just plain weird…
The Dungeon and Dragon board games came-
Dragonstrike, Darkworld, Mutant Chronicles-
We finally combined them all into one huge dungeon…
The poor dwarves...
Then lame spooky board games had their run-
Goosebumps, 13 Dead End Drive,
Are You Afraid of the Dark,
Nightmare- complete with a cheesy in-game video
With bad actors… enough to scare away trick-or-treaters...
And finally the computer and console games hit- First with bleeps and buzzers- Mario, Pacman... Then more sophisticated year after year- Sports, strategy, adventure, role playing...
The board games? The dust began to collect on the board games,
And toys, Their memories fade, our minds occupied elsewhere,
And many were transported (with varying success)
Into the electronic world…
Now the computer/online games
take weeks to complete or just go on forever…
So where are all these plastic toys and boardgames now?
In Rubbermaid containers,
Under beds, in closets, the garage, the attic, the basement silently waiting for a future generation of little curious fingers that have never held a little plastic warrior to behold the classic age of plastic toys and board games- to lift open container lids, in total bedazzled wonderment, like Alladin's first gaze upon the Genii's treasures...While an old grandpa, glint in his eye, and a little boy inside of him stands at the ready…
Gold trophy winner
Adding your comment:
This was fun to read.. I remember going through many of these stages, reguardless of the fact that I am a girl. lol I caught one typo.. "then knock them all down in a pitched battle, then put the away..." the should be 'them'? 'Kay then ^.^ I thoroughly enjoyed this 
Oh the nostalgia! Thanks for bringing back the memories
2 old applause
