F is for Follow-up . . . or Follow-down - Ladders AND Snakes!

Becoming a bit of a perennial here at Small Scale World, Loyal Readers, this will be the fourth Snakes & Ladder's Tag, as Christmas fast approaches, as we minimise the military content . . . and as I promise NO MORE SEX! For a bit, I've already had some sent in!

After both my old childhood Snakes and Ladders, and Theo van der Weerden's lovely Chad Valley one . . . 

. . . these turned up the other day! The same rich design and Edwardian litho-print colours of the previous two big-boards, and some age, but I don't know how much exactly! This one is marked The Harlesden Series, which Google says flourished between 1930-1950, so some age indeed, and applicable to both of them, as they were found together.

 

My favourite is 86-75, he's just sittin' there, Kool as der Kukumber Johnny! The characters are similar to Tiger Tim and the Bruin Boys, but not, so a knock-off playing with their iconography, or another set of known characters?

 

I used to work for a property-maintenance chap, lawns, drain-downs etc . . . and on one occasion we had to clean a pet'y carpet (dogs, an empty house will smell of the last dog for years after), so while he did that I went exploring and found an attic cubby-hole, which had a load of old games stuff, strewn about between the rafters, including these three, with two Snakes & Ladders boards, both with a Ludo board on the other side. This one is unmarked.

A quick second Google reveals that there is no order/hierarchy to the colours of the Ludo board, with all four possible combinations coming-up in the first few lines of results, along with substitutes like orange (for yellow) or pale-blue.

This was with them (along with stuff I won't bore you with, like home-Bingo cards with wooden numbers, old game-currency, card standees, that sort of thing, originally I had half-filled a bin-bag!), and it's an old Tiddlywinks 'target'. With no sign of corners, it must have either been designed to fold flat (which it does), or it went in the long-gone box tray, but if you looked after this to such a degree for all those decades, surely you would have looked-after the box too?

 

So, I suspect this is how it was, a portable playing 'arena'! More modern ones (the Merit one, we had as kids) would be in the box tray, with a plastic cup in the hole to collect the winks! Studying it, you realise scoring is pretty random, and it's more a game of luck than skill, but maybe if you played it a lot (no telly' back then!), you could get good at aimed jumps?

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!

N is for Nostalgia - Snakes & Ladders!

This is a very old friend, and in remarkably good condition remembering how often we played it Although the width of the fold-line shows that it has been opened and closed many times. I've seen PC versions called Shutes & Ladders, but where's the fun in that? We want great, big, SNAKES!

I loved this as a kid, branded to GJ Hayter & Co., of Bournemouth, under their famous Victory mark; I just loved the rich colours of the snakes, the Christmassy border - the whole thing. It's actually a particularly hard one to finish due in no small part to the big, blue, Mr. 93-25 who sends you back three-quarters of the board!

We also had a family rule that you had to 'throw your finish', which meant that if you were on say 98 and threw a six you would have to go 99-game-99-98-97-96, and hope for a four next time, but if you were on 98 and threw a three, you'd end your turn on 58! With three snakes on the top-row, they were sometimes long games, but fun and a great teacher of humility, humility and cynicism! As every time you thought you had it in the bag, it went South!

Even the label is rather fine, I think? If I recall correctly, these were sold in the old-school newsagents and corner shops (almost totally disappeared now), just loose boards stacked up in a box on a lower shelf, with Go boards, Sorry, Backgammon and a Chess/Draughts one etc . . . So this was probably at Webb's in Hartley Wintney and we (Bro' and me) may have chosen it, at some point?

N is for Novelty Board Games

The rest of the games, these are all from Christmas crackers, although some of them will be found in capsule/gum-ball dispensers, while the tube of dice is the sort of thing you'd also find in the pocket-money bins.

Little paper 'board' games, the one a copy of the other, it's not just figures they pirate, everything from brake-pads to Main Battle Tanks have been plagiarised by the Chinese in the last 70 years! Folded small and wrapped around a pack of black and white counters, one of them has a chess/draughts board printed on the other side.

Novelty dice can be very big, or a bit small, but practical sized dice will be found either with the game or in one of the other crackers in a set that includes the paper boards above. This is why you need to pull all the crackers in the box...even if it's just the two of you! Then you get to stack hats, making the 'last one wearing' game all the more exciting...not!

Seen before; these will either be with the game, or a cup (for tiddlywinks) in another cracker from the set. The bag to the left would have come stuffed into a little plastic cup, for playing tiddlywinks, the larger 'thumb' discs used to flick the smaller ones, while the set of all-small ones are for the Snakes & Ladders.