F is for Follow-up - More Snakes & Ladders!

I made a huge boo-boo on this morning's post, the catalogue and figures are DS Plastics, not De Gruyter (who were the premium issuing supermarket!), so I'll have to go back and edit all mentions of the one with the other! And I have no excuse as Theo made it all clear, indeed he corrected me once, but I was editing at 4am with matchsticks holding my eyes open!

In the meantime, Theo also sent me this by way of reply to my old Gibson/Victory set, and it's even nicer!

A more muted board and extra snakes makes this nicer than mine, and I love mine! The snakes are very similar but with less cartoony faces and there are 12 snakes to my board's 11, and ladders are also 12 (to my 10) and while ladders are shorter than snakes, they are not so short, so it should play a bit quicker than the Victory one.

I looked on evilBay, and this board gets an update (same split boarder, but different snake artwork) and an even later replacement which is very cheap, but I suspect this is a late Edwardian one, and the artwork is everything. Chad Valley (and others) also do an 'Indian version' with cut-off corners, but still 100 squares.

Again a charming - if rather violent - label on the outside of the board and bigger than our old family board, covering half the board or a whole 'fold', the lady using a ladder to escape a snake, while a fake fakir attempts some kind of venomous, viper murder!

Theo has the original playing pieces and their box, but also the rule sheet, missing on all the earlier ones I saw on feeBay. I think the tumbler is polished card, while the counters are turned wood.

The rules actually have a variation of our traditional family finish, but only that you have to sit there waiting for the right/exact throw, rather than our bobbing and weaving and risking a snake with every throw, but Chad Valley make up for an easy finish by having players who land on other players sending them (the sitting tenant of the square) "Back to square 1", which is well harsh!

Lovely board Theo, thanks for sending!

 

Late September the same year - and from the 'well fancy that' department; Collectors Gazette give us a history of Snakes & Ladders, no original imagery (all free-use internet stuff), and - it has to be said - not the first time that august publication has published stuff a few weeks or months after it's featured here at Small Scale World? It seems the Blog's influence is greater than some would like to admit!

 

What's doubly annoying is that when they copy Moonbase, they always credit them, when they copy me, they don't! And the usual author knows me well, so there's no excuse . . . Lesson there for all of us - if you fight the system, the system will fight back, so if you're a coward, don't fight the system, but expect to be shafted from the moment you're born until the moment you die, when your relatives will be charged three-times what it actually costs to burn a body!