V is for Variation on a Theme

I've pointed out before that two board games in particular (Monopoly and Cludo) have become marketing vehicles for the parting of money from fools, but others (Risk, Axis & Allies) get the multiple-version treatment, today it's back to Cludo / Clue.

With pop-culture dominating the non-work sphere of western or developed-world existence we will return to both as often as I find them in charity-shops - not being a fool, I wouldn't be seen dead paying-full for any of them, even if they did a Terminator Risk in 20mm with artwork by Moebius and figures sculpted by H. Geiger!

Un-boxing is easier as a .gif; there's a lot in here and it's been expanded to eight players, with three supports and 12 rooms, an expensive way of making a slower and more complicated version of an old favourite.

Endless (or 32?) alternate set-ups, but I think the positioning of the entrance hall/lobby may limit that choise-total, each is a separate card and there are some plastic crosses (x marks lots of spots) and magnifying glasses (which like the cracker-toy novelties do actually work!) that can be liberally sprinkled about the place like a fantasy games-master setting rat-traps!

The figures; only reason I care about the existence of any of these re-hashes, the three supernumeraries are the ones with square bases, the eight player-pieces get round bases, all nicely sculpted with parquet flooring - which matches . . . err . . . none of the rooms!

They are reasonable for 25/28mm gaming, and with the Victorian air, would suit Steampunk or the HG Wells/Jules Verne/H. R-Haggard anchored stuff, or even Edwardian 'Hardboiled' stuff.

Ably assisted - as always - by my late assistant, little did she know that 31 days later she would be joining the 99.9^r% of everything that ever lived, a message hidden there for the meat-faced loons who don't think we've entered the most serious existential-threat phase of our evolution? She is sorely missed.

T is for Two - Waddington's Board Games

Not quite as substantial as I may have been thinking of when I mentioned the possibility last week whenever (or one of the posts publishing yesterday ages ago!), but it ticks a couple of boxes and it's been a while since we had a board game's figures, while the Cludo shots are an addendum to that most vaguely recent games post - link below.

First though - the newbie; Goosebumps, not that old (1995/6 - Parachute Press/Hasbro) and looking familiar, so probably carried by Argos or the Toysaurus for a while? Although I may be confusing the availability of the game, with a brand familiarity (through the distinctive logo) brought about by the commoner (?) sightings of the books?

There are eight figural playing pieces of teenager-types; two each, of each of four colours, each pair being a 'team' of one boy and one girl. They are 45mm, so can be used with 54mm adults and there was a sort of pop-up/novelty ghost arrangement I haven't shot, along with the plastic skull and two game-specific die, although the 2-2-3-3-4-5 mean/average (?) dice could prove useful with other gaming?

I think these are too late for Stadden-senior's work, but I wonder if an apprentice of his might have had a hand in them, as it's faintly his style, and they probably came from the Havent plant of what had been Minimodels.

It's a complicated set-up with lots of slot-together construction and interactive components; apart from the above bits (and the ghost) it's all in landfill, or recycling now!

I picked-up the Waddington's box for the recent 'from storage' 40mm figure set along with a duplicate set of (Parker/Hasbro) figures, and only because of the - also 1996 - box art. The figures looking different from the ones we looked at the other day, but from the 'duplicate' above, you'll have guessed they weren't.

But that artwork still leaves us with enough stuff of curiosity to help this post! Top left shows pre-production prototypes which look similar to the final figures but are actually slightly different - the reverend isn't gripping his lapel, the cook's final small handled mixing-bowl is seen here as almost a frying pan. They may still exist somewhere!

However, they are balanced (no sign of glue?) on what would become the final tile-landscaped 'slotta' bases, although here with the slots either un-cut or filled-in. Also on the front of the box, a game in play shows the same prototype figures being used with chamfered-edge flat, smooth, almost puddled bases, with a rim around the lip (two lower images).

Another game in play on the back of the box shows the eventual production figures, in the paler gray plastic but with a third base type which, frankly - and despite the poor resolution -appear to be upturned, repainted, Smartie-tube lids?

R is for Return . . . To Cludo

You may have worked out by now that I took the camera through the Kenner-Parker-Hasbro board-game playing pieces box the other day!

So this is just a quick one to catch-up with the almost constant stream of Charity shop purchases of games with figural elements, and the almost constants stream of Cludo (Clue) games in particular!

Having looked at most of these I the last year or two, this is just to show the progression of the figures, while adding-in the figures I've mentioned in those previous posts and which I knew I had in storage, the grey ones with coloured bases. I suspect - looking at them in close up, that several are on the wrong base for the character, but that was as much the fault of Parker Brothers as it is mine!

Originally the pieces were wooden, and looked like the inset card's figure, albeit with a ball-finial in place of the cartoon head! That had become a similar-shaped plastic piece by my childhood.

In the 1970/80's they became the dumpy versions seen in the foreground, and by the 1990's the grey figures (second rank) with slip-on bases coloured to match the traditional characters had replaced the plain 'counters'

The 2000's saw the PVC (or substitute PVC) full-colour set of more caricatured figures in a slightly manga-anime style reflecting both the opening-up of the Asian markets and where they are made!

While the two sets at the back we looked at recently (and will be finable through tags) and are from variant games with the four realistic figures being actually four new characters enabling electronic game-play for the original six who are card-only.

This is the second set of these Simpsons licensed figures I've obtained in the last few years, as far as I know, it's the same game, just - new version = new money for Parker!

The irony is that while I scrabble around shoving the odd quid-or-two at charity, somewhere there will be dedicated Cludo (or Simpson) collectors who have every version ever made. It's the same irony with the TJF 'thing' he gets excited about stuff which is on evilBay every day; often photographed better! For nearly everything I've ever shown here, there's been a hundred better shots on feeBay! Or elsewhere on the wibbly wobbly way!

The best of the playing pieces was this cobra, death by cobra is surely the cobra's fault, not the players, that's manslaughter, not murder! "I didn't know it was a cobra your honor!"

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!

C is for Clue . . . Doh!

Well, that was a title that wrote itself, even if it was a bad pun, it was waiting to happen!

Another week, another board game! More charity shop plunder, I love 'em, and you don't feel guilty shoving the 90% in the recycling bin when it only owes you a quid . . . or two, I think this was £1.95!

This is the third generation of playing piece, with primary coloured 'milk bottle' counters for the longest time, then in the late 1980's/1990's sometime, they went over to realistic sculpts in grey polystyrene with coloured 'penny' bases, then in 2002 we got these PVC vinyl (or similar) figures in full colour, each having the dominant 'traditional' colour of each suspect, except the housekeeper . . . and Professor Plum who is a bit orange.

The new['ish] figures and what a dodgy-looking bunch of near-do-well's they are! Colonel Mustard the old B'stard, Miss Scarlet - so the blood won't show, Reverend (are you sure?) 'the hulk' Green, Mrs Peacock, silly name - silly hat, the Ging'er-ming'er should be called Professor' Tangerine' now surely and the housekeeper - black [heart] is white!

They all have a back-story now, but did they always . . . I don't remember back-story's on the sets of my childhood? And the cartoon graphics are very Manga-style in execution, I seem to remember as a kid they were quite sober-looking, realistic, if slightly Edwardian? Fashions change - I guess.

I'm joking-about to make the blurb - it's a board-game and there's only so much you can say about it, but joking apart, it's got a much nicer playing board with more realistic birds-eye views of each of the suitably furnished rooms.

Also the murder weapons have had a make-over, although the loss of the little bit of golden 'rope' in favour of an ethylene moulding is sad I think. The new dagger, on the other hand, is quite fine, and very useful for 70mm Romans, if you happen to have one lying around, unarmed!

The spanner has been replaced by an adjustable monkey-wrench and the gun is now a little six-barrelled 'pepper-pot'.

Which three cards are in the envelope? We used to love this as kids, far less fights than with Monopoly and there was a certain magic in 'working out' who/where/what, before anyone else!

I thought I'd posted the grey figures back at the beginning of the blog, but I can't find them to link to; so we'll look at them here another time! In the meantime there's boardgamegeek:

BGG - Clue

BGG - Cluedo

D is for Dastardly Dead Death by Dodgy Doughnut. . . Doh!

Just a quickie today, from the Parker Games stable of Hasbro, this is one of several tie-in versions of the old Cludo game, but called Clue (as it always was the other side of the pond) and staring The Simpsons!

Charity-shop find, couple of quid, brilliant! Crusty has the most colours; eight including the black and white they all share (nine with the yellow plastic they also share!), while some only have two or three, to even-out unit-costs over the set. Murder weapons include Marge's necklace, Crusty's 'Glove-O-Matic', a radioactive fuel-rod from Springfield's power station and a poisoned doughnut! The kids are killing with a catapult and saxophone!

Each figure is primarily coloured to equate to one of the traditional characters, which are then given on the cards next to the Simpson character's name, rather negating the point of using Simpson characters, but at least we get another six figures to collect! Figures are between twenty-five  and forty-five millimeters.

If the little envelope ever said someone else Killed Homer anywhere with the doughnut, I'd challenge the result, they haven't made a doughnut that would kill Homer yet . . . which reminds me; did I ever tell you about the doughnuts you used to get at Guildford station, they had little pimples on the base where they expanded into their mesh-trays, as they cooked . . . covered in sugar . . . the jam was to die for . . . sometimes I used to buy two . . . and another on the way home . . .if they had any left . . . Doh!