F is for Follow-up - Cluedo

So to closing a day of board-game posts, we looked at the newer 'standard' version of Cludo the other day, and a nice set of Simpson's playing pieces from the same game a while ago, and I picked-up a few more in recent days, so we're going to look at them next.

It's a funny thing but - in sympathy with the corporate 'web' we saw with the Buzzbee stuff yesterday -  you don't know who to credit these to, indeed; if I posted them as three posts they would end-up with different tag-lists, by dint of one being Waddington's, one Parker and one; Hasbro-Parker.

I will find the old posts and tag them 'Cludo' (if I haven't already) as the more examples that appear, of the more popular games with figures, the more complicated the picture will be with all of them.

Technically they are all Hasbro now, but in the past, the two 'big boys' (Waddington's and Parker) shared licenses of each other's games, and bought-up all the smaller guys, one by one, leaving everything in the Hasbro stable!

This was going to be three images, but I didn't think I'd have enough blurb to justify them, in fact I could have dropped them into the above waffle, but hay-ho! Three games purchased for a grand total of less than a fiver, three charity shops in three towns, but to be honest, car boot sales give-up this kind of thing for similar small beer!

Top is a late 1970's or early 1980's version of the standard game, the cards still have the original artwork, and when I was a kid the 'player' looked the same. Obviously; without the little faces perched on top - jut a small blob finial.

Middle left is the box for a set the setting for which is a sort of febrile Hollywood/Bel Air type community. The other set is an electronic one which introduces four new playing figures (we'll look at in a mo') but doesn't have the six traditional characters, who remain only cards, with two additional ner-do-wells; Rusty the gardener and Mrs. Meadow-Brook. Character artwork for the later conforms to the Hasbro era.

The Players of the 'Discover The Secrets' version are lightly coloured clear plastic, on full-coloured bases, very boring, but there are nine murder weapons instead of the common six, one of which is a celeb' award . . . some divine justice in there I feel!

Below is the set I remember with its little piece of yellow 'rope' and  'Habitat' design 'mini-figs', not that I'm suggesting Habitat actually had a hand in designing them, just that they are part of the whole post-modernist, melamine, Perspex, 2001 A Space Odyssey furniture, geometric wallpaper era of 'form & function'al design.

Similar playing pieces were found in most games of the era; Go!, Ludo, Hama . . . and with the Campaign ones having little Napoleonic headdresses instead of a ball! Hopefully with this new move away from plastics we will go back to turned wooden tops or upside down golf-tees? I rather like wooden toys, they are very tactile and age with grace.

The electronic set has only four player figures and they aren't the murders, they are to help find the one among eight who is actually guilty, as I bought the set elsewhere and dumped the non-useful contents in the bin after photographing the box, I can't even tell you how many murder weapons there were as they were also only cards, and went to land-fill!

I will remove them from the little-click-button bases at some point, but having investigated the task, it will require a very sharp chisel and a clamp . . . and the right angle for a swift, sure strike with a hammer!

Each of the four seems to equate vaguely to one of the common characters, with Prince Azure being the Colonel Mustard, Lord Gray - Professor Plum, and the two ladies Peach for Scarlett and Lavender for Peacock, I don't think this is accidental, I suspect the game started life quite differently to the final published version,

A lot of these spin-offs are pale, often gimmicky, shadows of the tried and tested originals, and I think this was tweaked until it worked, in the course of which two players were lost as pieces, four renamed and the rest added-tp as a card set?

Ah, the 'meat & two veg' of Cludo . . . the guns and knives! Posed with the Roman Gladius and 'pepperpot' we looked at last time are a silenced automatic (Walther PPK?!!) and vicious-looking kitchen knife from Hollywood along with the more traditional 'representative' pistol and letter-opener of the standard set.

As I mentioned lest time, there is still the interim set of grey figures on coloured bases from the 1990's to come, and I will look out others. There's a Junior Cludo version (no murder, just cake theft - and 'grown-up's doing the stealing at that!) which seems to have figural pieces and which I nearly got the other day - but I already had the Buck Rogers under me'arm!