Board games were better than sitting in front of the TV or the idiot tube, as my Father called it.

We played a lot of card games as well and we read...

But, today, I do not know what I would do with out my computer or my blog, BabyBoomerAdvisorClub.com to keep me busy as I still am not a TV person.

Thanks for the memories,
Sharon
~The Baby Boomer Queen~

I had all the board games you mentioned in the article. Plus, lots of kid-type card games. My neighborhood chums and I spent lots of rainy days (and too hot to be in the sunny yard days) on our screened back porch playing those board and card games. I also had Candyland, Chutes 'n' Ladders, Operation, Pick-Up-Stix, Cootie, Keno, Easy Money, Password, Parcheesi, Sorry! and Video Village.

Do any other Boomers remember Video Village? It was made by Milton-Bradley, and was patterned after a popular TV game show where two contestants moved around on a life-sized "game board". It aired on CBS (1960-1962) and had prime-time, daytime and Saturday morning versions. Kids were the contestants on Saturdays. M-B offered the "home version" for several years beyond the TV run. Read about Video Village on Wikipedia.com and IMDb.com.

Board games were good but the game I remember while reading this is Mille Bornes, which was the game of choice as a child followed by a ham radio and chess. Thanks for the memories.

I was Mille Bornes fan myself, ended up a geek :-D

Oh those great games! Hmmmmmm! Remember the Green Ghost game with a glow in the dark base that we played in a dark room! We eventually got the mouse trap game and it was just fun building it. Game of Life was fun. I wonder if they have updated those games for todays world. The housing crash.
Babies with only one parent, Life insurance fraud, 401 Ks tanking, high murder rates, etc etc..Lol!
Monopoly...Did the main character of Monopoly get struck by the Reading Railroad? Did the local jail have an inmate riot? Did that hotel on Marvins Garden ever burned down. Did the Boardwalk. Cave in? Just jesting here, but think about those games updated to todays world! The possibilities are countless? Other great games: Operation, Shennanagans, Hi Ho Cherry O, Candyland, Dark shadows, Mystery Date for the girls! Hey today, and probably secretly back then, the Dud in Mystery Date game was desirable? Parcheesi, Kerplunk, Hands Down, Battleship.and many more!

I remember drooling over many board games and toys. We did not always get them when they came out. Often, it would be a few years after their debut that we would find one in the 2nd hand shop like Goodwill or Salvation Army, my mother’s favorite hangouts. We got many games that way. But between friends and ourselves over time, we must have played them all. But I thought I might pick some favorites as well as duds.

Many were simple games of hoping for high rolls and moving along, avoiding being sent back and hoping to get a leap ahead or like that. The game of Life was sort of fun yet not too long. Monopoly was good but long. Risk is awesome but very long.

One game one friend and I played a lot was Parcheesi. We had a competition going and both were near 50 wins a piece. Best part about Parcheesi was sending people back to home. I like games like that. There were Parcheesi like games I recall. One was made of plastic and the dice were in a pop up bubble and it had four corners for four players with their own color. It was fun when younger than 14. Which witch was amusing for a little while. Battle Ship was just a matter of placing ships in a pattern hard to detect and was much a game of luck. I recall a game called Dealer’s Choice, where you were a car dealer and bought and sold cars, from mint cars to junk. You could bluff but if you were called on it and found lying, then you gave it away plus penalties. It was a lot of fun. You could burn other dealer’s cars if you had a card for it. A riot, really.

I strain my brain to recall the many games. Stratego, some game with coconuts and a spinning monkeys in a hut. Can’t remember much about it. Operation was one we got 5 years or more after it advertised. It was fun at first but quickly got boring. Sorry was fun. Again, you could hurt others ;-) Nice guy, wasn’t I?

But now I will highlight the very best board game ever. It was a Bobby Orr Hockey game. It was a board with metal rods attached to plastic players and you could pull the rods back and forth and spin the players to shoot the puck. I had seen the light solid pucks but my set had outer plastic while the middle was a metal ball. I could really fire that puck off. Passing from wings to the center was the best way to score but I had great “slap shots” from my wings and the puck would literally come up off the board an inch, and sneak in past the back of the goalie if the other player did not get him over fast enough and hit the far side of the net and sometimes could out the other side. Many hours playing that game with friends after school.

The defense looked like Bobby Orr and the center looked an awful lot like Phil Esposito. I got it in Xmas of 71, I think. Orr was huge. Listen, there are 2 undisputed names at the top of the NHL. You can debate between those two who was greater, but no one else is in that circle. That is Orr or Gretsky. Orr was a very big deal in 71. Bruins had won the cup in 70 (and 72) and suddenly more hockey stuff was selling in southern Maine, Just 2 hours from Boston. There was other hockey sets around before Orr’s but I never met a person who played those who did not think Orr’s was the best set there ever was. Mine is still at my mother’s place.

There was a football game by Mattel, I think. It has play cards for both offense and defense and you would flip this ball on a rod and spring and where it landed would indicate on the cards what you got. That was a friend of mine who had that.

The board game most popular with my family was Scrabble. We played it endlessly with my parents and grandparents. It was a great way to improve one’s vocabulary. We also played Parcheesi and Chinese Checkers Like most everyone else, we had the obligatory Monopoly but as it could take a long time to determine a winner, it was only played when we knew there was enough time to finish.

A few years ago my city’s high school was raising funds by selling a modified Monopoly; it was named for the city (i.e., Bostonopoly) with local attractions and streets replacing the Atlantic City standards. The rules were also modified making it next to impossible for anyone to win – we played it once and determined its indeterminacy and never played it again.
.When Trivial Pursuit came out, our family played it for a few days and I was banned from competition so that didn’t last either.

One of my favorite games which wasn’t strictly a board game was a fishing game called “New and Improved Fish Pond” (I was a rabid angler from age 4 until about age 25) my great aunt had it when she was a girl (circa 1890) and I would cajole her into letting my sister and me play with it when we visited.

The way it worked was one would fish with a wooden pole with a string for a line and a metal hook at the end of the line. The lithographed cardboard fish were placed in slots in the box with their noses sticking out. Each nose had a small eyelet into which the hook could be fished. Each type of fish had a different point value and you took turns catching the fish until they were all gone. The points were added up to determine the winner.

Now days I’m waiting for my granddaughter to become old enough for Candyland or Chutes & Ladders.

The games mentioned was my favorite. in Holland it was named Cluedo. This game and Game of life we played it a lot. We still play games a lot during our campingtrips (play cards) and when it's raining and there's nothing on the tv. Monopoly is also a game we play frequently. It's fun. Even that my wife and daughter always wins.

How about Mystery Date? My girlfriends and I would play that game endlessly.