Creepiest Kids Board Game Ever? Voodoo

Don't make fun, but I like to go antiquing. Not only is it like stepping back in time, but you can find some really amazing pieces of home decor, clothing, and even board games. Plus (bonus!) most antique dealers don't know the value of board games whatsoever. Most would probably charge more for a Dukes of Hazard game than they would for a copy of Big Boggle. Suckers. So you can either make big, fat cash for games you find, or you can pick up some playable treasures on the cheap. Win-win.

But on Friday, at an antique store in Livonia, the Greatest Husband in the World found a board game treasure worth more than mere currency. It HAS to be the reigning champion for the creepiest damn kids game ever made. Seriously.

Gamers, meet Voodoo. The game where you poke pins into a voodoo doll until you anger the witch doctor and he comes after you.

The game was published in 1967, at the height of American cultural sensitivity and an era of compassionate nurturing of our youth. </sarcasm> Now there are a couple of things that really strike me as both terrifying and delightful about this game:

1. The marketing. It's really marketed heavily to kids, in that the box actually reads "Voodoo Doll Game for boys and girls". See? They even print it on the plastic game board. As if the clarification was really needed.

2. The box art. This had to give a lot of kids nightmares. The cartoon voodoo doll on the cover--the one with the fangs, black finger nails, red eyes (and a lovely pearl necklace)--is compelling you to stab her with large pins. And those have to be the BIGGEST, scariest damn pins I've ever seen, since they're apparently as big as a bongo drum or a small witch doctor.

Side note: Does anyone else remember Halloween III: Season of the Witch when that company tries to sell Halloween masks that will hypnotize and then murder all the little kids in the world on Halloween? I keep getting that feeling about this game. I played it once today, and now tomorrow morning I'm worried I'm going to wake up and find my husband punctured with dozens of knitting needles in the bed beside me. My hands will be covered in blood, but I won't remember what happened. It's all black.

3. They set you up to scare the living crap out of your playmates. During game set-up, you have to activate the mechanism that makes the witch doctor pop out of his hut by secretly placing tiny metal pins into the holes of the doll device (helloooooo, choking hazards!). Each opponent takes turns doing this in secret, away from the prying eyes of her friends. Then blammo, you're responsible for giving the other little kiddies a heart attack when they punch your landmine.

4. The witch doctor makes me shit my pants. Okay, not really. But close. Too close. So you play this game by taking a bunch of plastic pins and poking them into the plastic molding of a voo doo doll girl (the one with the fangs). If you poke her in the wrong place (dirty!), the witch doctor comes popping out of his hut (presumably to eat your vital organs, starting with your eyeballs). And that witch doctor is SCARY. He comes flying out with such a large POP! that I jump every time.

Then again, I'm the person whose nerves are too tender to play Operation. So maybe don't take my word for it.

So why did I buy this game? Well, first, it was only $5.00. The box is there, and the mechanism still functions perfectly. But also, how cool is it that this game was made to frighten children in such a gruesome way? They NEVER would make this game today. The whole premise is to get kids good and creeped out, force them to play voodoo priestess, poke a doll with play needles, and then POP! Surprise, you lose. It's a horror movie experience, all wrapped up in a clever simple little board game. Wicked awesome in a box.

I've already played it enough times to make myself giggle, and to chase my husband around with the box lid yelling that it's going to eat him. So I'll be putting this for sale over at BGG, in case anyone's interested in a little piece of frightening Americana. I highly recommend it for a dark and stormy night!

Garage Sale Gold: Clue Games and 221B Baker Street

One of my dirty little secrets is that I'm a garage sale fiend. I'm happy to scour piles and piles of junk for...among other things...board games (what else?). I don't often find much that's interesting. A game of Monopoly here and there (especially if it's a lame university edition). Usually a couple copies of Scene-It (Twilight edition or Hannah Montana edition). Maybe a copy of Trivial Pursuit. But mostly you just find kids games. Gaa.

But today, I hit gold!

Okay...maybe more like silver. (It's not like I found Aquaretto new in shrink, or anything.) The following games were just tossed on some card table, waiting for me to take them home: Clue: Master Detective, Clue: The Great Museum Caper, and 221B Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes and the Time Machine. And all of these beauties were just a buck each. Now, seeing as I didn't even have a dime on me (not for lack of checking under the car seats, I assure you), I had to put the games "on hold", and drive my car down my street as fast as I could...tear the kid out of her car seat...run through the house collecting dollar bills and quarters...cram the baby back in the car seat...and then squeal back down the street, just so I could laugh like a fiend while doing the tip-toe running thing that Snidely Whiplash does all the way back to the car with games under my arm. Talk about exhausting.

This is a real coup since the holidays are coming up, and one of my favorite things about the holidays is that my brother-in-law flies into town to stay with us, and the three of us stay up into the wee hours of the night playing endless games of Clue together. Our trio just gets super competitive, scribbling little notes in margins and meta-gaming facial expressions. Plus we gorge on snack foods the whole time, like Win Schulers and Wheat Thins.

And now, we're going to be able to mix it up with the 1988 "Master Detective" game, since it's the basic Clue game padded with extra characters, rooms, and weapons. Bigger is better, right? More to suspect. And the new Miss Peach reminds me of something straight out of the cast of Designing Women. (In fact, wasn't she the character that replaced Delta Burke?) Anything Delta Burke-ish HAS to be great.

Then there's the "Museum Caper" game, which I have never played before. But the very fact that it's a 3-D version of Clue with mysterious locks...yeah, I'm stoked. What really piques my interest is the possibility that it's an independent twist on the Clue game. I'd like to have a different experience with the fun murder-mystery feel. For right now, it definitely looks Wheat Thin-worthy.

221B Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes and the Time Machine is a complete mystery to me--from its not-so-easy-to-remember name, to its core gameplay structure. I know it's a mystery game that revolves around the Sherlock Holmes character, and that this is an updated 1996 bastard son version of the original 1970s game. Other than that, I will have to rely on my sleuthing abilities to figure out this enigma of a game...by pulling out the damn instructions and reading them. But I think I'll look cute in the Holmes hat. Right?

And no matter what, $1 per game is a bargain. So even if I only play it once and send it to the Origins auction next spring, then I still more than got my money's worth. Go, go, garage sale power!