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LANGOFUN – The International Language Game

April 6, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

If you were in secondary school in the 1980s and your French teacher promised an end of term treat – chances are they might have pulled out the board game LANGOFUN. Described as The International Language Game and with a sub-title of “Race from Paris to Monte Carlo and improve your French as you go” you can see what they were aiming to do with this game. Make secondary school French exciting and glamorous. I’ll leave you to decide if they manage it or not.

LANGOFUN French English Languages Board Game

The game board is arranged so that it looks like you are travelling from Paris to Monte Carlo and passing various other French towns and cities as you go. There are some squares on which you are penalised in some way and others where landing on them is to your advantage, but the game isn’t a straightforward roll and move. In fact there are no dice.

Spin the wheel

Instead players are given the excitement of a roulette wheel instead. Remember – we’re off to Monte Carlo, the home of famous casinos. Although, how age appropriate that is for second day school children is another question!

When a player spins the wheel they then have to call out the number that they have landed on in French to tell everyone which page of the “key book” their translation question is going to come from. LANGOFUN comes with two “key-books” which are basically pages of numbered words or phrases in French that need translating into English to score points. Or vice-versa if you prefer to play that way. The game comes with two Key-Books, one at approximately O-Level French standard, and the second at A-Level standard.

After the first spin dictates the page, a second spin of the roulette wheel means they again have to shout out a second number in French to dictate which phrase they are going to be questioned on. Great numbers practice so far.

Translate to score points and move

Once they have a phrase they can either try to translate it to score points, or can pass it on to another player. Should they get the translation correct they get to move forward a certain number of spaces (depending on how difficult the translation was deemed to be), but of they get it wrong they have to go back the same number of spaces. The playing pieces in LANGOFUN are small plastic cars – a slightly nicer touch than just standard plastic playing pieces.

How to win

The first player to get to Monte Carlo is the winner. That could be by getting all the way there on the road, or possibly by landing on the lucky helicopter space which means you fly direct there, overtaking anyone that may have been on the road ahead of you.

My thoughts on LANGOFUN

It’s a simple enough game, which a board that looks like it would have been quite nice for a simple kids roll and move game travelling across France.

Modern technology means that the whole concept of Key-Books is rather old fashioned (I’m guessing the game was originally devised in the 1980s, but can’t actually find a date) but at the same time it’s rather endearing and certainly would have been a good way of children practicing French numbers and phrases. How much of the vocabulary matches with the modern day GCSE and A-Level syllabus I simply don’t know. Nor am I sure how much my rusty GCSE French would cope playing it today. It might have been nice as something different for anyone trying to homeschool in lockdown though.

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Whooops!

March 23, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

Without car boot sales and charity shops not many “new” vintage board games have come into this house recently, but then I spotted someone selling a big bundle of games just over in the next village. When I messaged the guy and said my husband would be over shortly to pick them up he happened to mention that he also had some extra games and he should bring some extra money in case any of those were also of interest. I was somewhat delighted therefore when he came home with some extras – including three small box Waddingtons games that I wasn’t familiar with. Possibly the most interesting of which was Whooops! (Note the three o’s – more important than you might realise)

I’ve obviously seen lots of Waddingtons games over the years, many in the traditional “long box” that many of us saw Cluedo and Monpopoly in. The box for Whooops is more comparable with a small box version of Careers that I have in my collection, but with that version of Careers the board wasn’t included, but with Whooops it is folded inside the box.

Taxis and Prams

In Whooops each player has control of both a taxi and a pram. Not an obvious combination. The aim of the game is to make as much money as possible in taxi fares whist using your pram to try to block other taxis on zebra crossings and prevent them from picking up fares.

The instructions are relatively simple with each player having a taxi and a pram of the same colour. Taxis start at the air terminal and prams starts in the park. Each player has two bank notes. Quite what denomination they are will depend on which version of the game you have.

Zebra crossings

Players roll the die once and move both pieces by the number they roll. Taxis have to keep to the road, prams to the path. The paths cross the road at zebra crossings, but taxis are not allowed to stop on these crossings and a by-law is in place to fine any driver who does so.

The twist in the game is that whilst there is a policeman next to each zebra crossing on the board, they are not always watching it. When a player lands on a zebra crossing they must roll the die again and note whether they roll and odd or an even number. Next to every crossing it says odd or even. Depending on what they have rolled the policeman is alerted on all odd or even crossings and fines any taxis on them. And yes, that is ALL crossings, not just the one where the player rolled the die again.

What is not totally clear to me is where you are trying to go in your taxi. I’m assuming you have to go to the Station at the other end of the board as the rules doe talk about how taxis must land on one of the station’s four spaces by an exact throw and if they overshoot the station they must circle round and try again. They talk about taxis having to go to the air terminal to pick up a fare, but is that after they have dropped the first fare at the station? And how do you remember which taxis are carrying a fare and who are returning to base?

The rules show that a taxi can pick up an extra fare by landing on one of the four taxi stands on the board.

The winner of the game is either the first to collect an agreed sum, or the player with the most money at the end of the game.

10 shilling of £1 taxi fares?

Interestingly both the board and the further card of instructions and clarifications wedged into the bottom of the box are dated 1967, but the instructions actually have 1970 on them. When I looked this game up on Board Game Geek they have a 1970s version listed as “the only version of this game” yet their description of it is dated 1967. The other difference is that they, and this second article I’ve found mentioning it, both talk about 10 shilling taxi fares and yet my version definitely talks about £1 fares and contains £1 notes rather than 10 shilling ones.

I’m therefore suggesting that there were actually two versions of the game – probably one in 1967 using 10 shilling notes, and a second in 1970 with £1 notes instead. It’s also interesting to note that Waddingtons also used the name Whoops (note with two o’s instead of three!) for a completely different game later. Honestly, the history of all their games is so inconsistent and absolutely fascinates me!

My thoughts on Whooops!

There’s something about Whooops! that I find incredibly charming, but at the same time I’m not sure I can see it appealing to just children. Maybe it would. Certainly the box size really lends itself well to being taken on a family holiday or similar, or maybe just for a family who don’t have a huge amount of space to store big box board games. Certainly the small box means I don’t have to do too much negotiation to be able to add it to my Waddingtons collection.

Are you a fan of vintage board games?

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For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

Expedition to the Himalayas

March 10, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

I get very excited when I find a vintage board game that I haven’t seen before. I love seeing what some of the old ideas for games were and enjoy researching them. It’s therefore exciting and frustrating to find a game that I can’t find out anything more about. That seems to be the case with Expedition to the Himalayas, which came in a bundle of board games that I bought via someone on Facebook.

Expedition to the Himalayas – the game

Expedition to the Himalayas Board Game Arthur Haynes Nicholas Parsons

The box proudly states:

Join Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons (TV’s popular pair) in an Expedition to the Himalayas

It goes on to say: Beware of the abominable snowman. Can you avoid him. He is lurking everywhere.

Those descriptions on the box basically give you the premise of the game. The board, which is neatly set in the base of the box, is a simple path showing steps from two base camps at the bottom to the summit of the mountain. Overlapping with the path are the footsteps of the abominable snowman.

Game characters and playing pieces

The game is designed for 2 to 4 players with two of the playing pieces being Arthus Haynes and Nicholas Parsons. The other two remain unnamed. The fifth playing piece is that of the abominable snowman himself.

Each is formed of a coloured piece of card with a character on it and a small wooden base for the card to be held in. I have no idea if the bases are original or not, but the characters are not a tight fit in them and hence they’re a bit useless as if you try to pick them up by the card it just comes clean out!

Game spinner

Rather than a die, players are supposed to spin a “tent” on a spinner to see how many spaces they are to move on the board. Players can spin from 1 to 6. I’m not sure if it’s due to age or rust in the pin (or both!), but our spinner doesn’t seem to spin freely at all and so we chose to use a die instead.

On each turn a player spins the spinner and moves their playing piece the same number of places. They also move the abominable snowman the same number of places along his footprint trail. This crosses the players’ path at several points and if a player ends up on the same square as the snowman they are sent back too basecamp.

Once the snowman reaches his finishing point he turns around and comes back down the mountain. Once he’s back at his starting point he turns around again and goes back up.

Hazard spaces

If a player lands on a pink coloured square it means they have encountered a hazard. They must count what number hazard it is from the start and multiply that number by 6 (who knows why!) to read from the hazard card as to what their instructions are.

To win the game a player needs to reach the summit exactly. If they overshoot then they have to bounce back and try again.

This game is in essence a simple roll and play game which a few hazards thrown in. Nice and easy for kids and the whole family.

Why Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons?

The question has to be asked though as to why on earth this was produced. Whilst Nicholas Parson’s was generally well known until his death in 2020, Arthur Haynes isn’t someone I was that familiar with. Looking him up I’ve found that he was very famous back in the 1950s and 60s as a comedian and had his own comedy sketch show on ITV. In the late 50s and early 60s Nicholas Parsons also became a household name when he appeared in some of Haynes’ sketches and then became a regular playing opposite him.

What my research hasn’t yet shown is if they were ever in a sketch together about mountain climbing, the Himalayas or anything to do with the abominable snowman. I’m guessing that they must have done for it to have inspired this game, but if so then I’m yet to find it.

The Granda connection?

There is no date anywhere on the game itself and the box just tells us that it was produced by “The Granada Novelty Co, London, England”. I’m guessing that Granada relates to the Granada TV company, but from what I’ve found his TV show was actually produced by ATV not Granada, so I’m again wondering if he did something else with Granada that I’m yet to stumble across. I can find no mention online of The Granada Novelty Co and certainly when I look at a history of Granada TV’s other ventures I can find no mention of it. Another mystery.

Haynes and Nicholas Parsons stopped working together in 1964 which suggests the game must date from between 1957 (when I believe they started appearing together) and 1964, but I’m yet to narrow down any more.

If you know anything at all about this game, the Granda Novelty Co or why someone decided to put Arthur Haynes and Nicholas Parsons into a game in the first place then I would love to hear from you!

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Kojak – The Detective Game

March 7, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

With the kids now going back to school (hurrah!) we’re making an attempt to catch up on all the vintage board games that we had hoped to play over Christmas. We ended up with me testing positive for Covid on Christmas Day and my first day out of quarantine was the day home schooling started. It’s been a long year so far!

First off the pile was Kojak – The Detective Game, produced by Arrow Games in 1975.

Now, I had relatively high hopes for this game as I always love games that are detective or spy themed. Unfortunately the instructions made it seem a bit more exciting than it actually is.

The game is for two to four players and the aim is that you play a detective and the winner is the detective who arrests the most criminals out of the four on the board. The board is set up as if there are “roads” (although they don’t look particularly road like) and each player has two police cars.

Contact Cards

To start the game each player has to dispatch one of his police cars to go and collect a Contact Card from the Contact Card Room on the board. To get there though you have to pretty much do a whole lap of the board thanks you various one-way streets in the centre You need to land there with an exact number and there’s nothing else to do on the way!

Once you have your Contact Card you know which colour criminal you’re going after and you have to take your car to the appropriate stake out point on the board. Once you’ve done that your second car is dispatched to Police HQ to get a warrant card to be able to arrest the criminal you’re after.

Trap Cards

To actually be able to make an arrest you not only need the appropriate warrant card, but you also need the criminal to be in the correct “arrest position” to do this players pick up Trap Cards as they go around the board (but only after being assigned to a case). The Trap Cards move the criminals around the small circles in their locations and there is just one space on the four around the circle where they can be arrested from. So basically, once you have a car in position to be able to make an arrest soon then you need to keep moving around the board trying to get enough Trap Cards to be able to make an arrest.

To be honest it’s quite tedious and slow and we gave up half way through trying to arrest the second criminal.

Confusion Reigns

The other part of the game that I found quite confusing is that the detective cars are coloured red, blue, yellow and green and so are the criminals. But the colours are not in any way linked. So the Green Detectives could be going after the Green Criminal. And when the detectives go and get a warrant card it’s in their colour rather than the colour of who they are hoping to arrest.

The rules of the games are written slightly unclearly with respect to the colours, and also in terms of saying when you need and exact number to land on something and when you don’t. You basically just need to agree this as a house rule before you start.

If you’re a fan of the Kojak TV show then it’s a nice little collector’s item. Otherwise it’s just too frustrating a roll and move game to take up space in our collection. The car playing pieces are a nice touch, but that’s not enough to lift the game out of being dull in our opinion.

Kojak The Stake Out Board Game

Now, one thing to note is that this is a different game from the MB version. MB released a version called Kojak The Stake Out Board Game. Whilst there are some similarities with the Arrow Games version (in particular the playing pieces, some of the card names and some of the basic board design) the game play looks much more involved with codes to solve and revolving turntables with the informers stood on, hence much more interesting. Looking at the two games I get the impression that someone at MB got the Arrow Games version and the instructions to make it more exciting.

The Stake Out Board Game was an American MB release though and I’ve not seen any copies of it on eBay here in the UK. It’s a shame as I’d quite like to play it to compare the two versions. I did manage to come across this excellent (if long) video review on YouTube if you’re interested. The guy behind the video mentions the “UK Version” by which I think he means the Arrow Games version.

I don’t think this Arrow Games version of Kojak is going to stay in my collection, it’s just too dull to really want to play it again. The MB version however is now on my want list.

Updated: Someone over on the fantastic Vintage Board Games UK Facebook group (link below) has pointed out to me that Arrow Games were actually the UK division of MB Games. That makes complete sense when you look at the Kojak game passing from Arrow to MB in the US. Another avenue for me to research too.

Are you a fan of vintage board games?

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

AD: Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks from Marvin’s Magic

February 16, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

A review of the Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks from Marvin’s Magic.

Let’s all be honest here. After half a term of home schooling parents are currently desperate to find a way to keep they children off screens and entertained. Half term after a six week slog is so very welcome, but it’s not like any other half term is it?

In that brief period where the kids were back at school last year there was one craze that seemed to be sweeping through my daughter’s Year 6 class – the Rubik’s cube. Now I remember when I was at Primary School and we were all obsessed with these and loved trying to do them. These days it’s all a bit different with YouTube videos and even apps too help kids master them. But what next to keep their attention? That’s where the Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks from Marvin’s Magic totally comes into its own.

This beautiful box makes such perfect use of the iconic Rubik’s cube design that at first I was quite tempted to keep the box for myself! Inside you find 40 magic tricks that all make use of the Rubik’s cube in some way. The perfect number to mark the 40th anniversary of the Rubik’s cube itself.

All the tricks and puzzles are designed for children aged 8 and over, so are perfect for little hands rather than adult sized ones. Some take a bit of working out and practice, whilst others are pretty much good to go once you’ve read through the instructions once. What I really liked about it is just how much variety there is in the box. Some kids can do slight of hand, whilst others struggle with it. Some love optical illusions, whilst others prefer something practical. This box covers all bases.

I set my two (aged 8 and 10) loose on the Box of Tricks and they absolutely loved it. They spoke about how much some of it reminded them of our pre-Covid visit to Edinburgh and the amazing World of Illusions there. Having illusions that they could do themselves gave them a certain thrill after seeing all the large ones there.

The wonder of a magic set like this one is that you can also hand it over to the kids, ask them to go away and research and practice the tricks in the privacy of their bedrooms (after all they want to trick you don’t they?) and then come back down and give the whole family a magic show. It’s a great, practical way of getting the kids away from a screen, and also getting my two to work together as a team for a bit. And who doesn’t love a magic show?

A magic set is actually something my kids haven’t really had before. They’ve been bought a few practical jokes as gifts before, but this is their first full set, and Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks is a stunning one to start with. I really can’t say too much about how beautifully this set is put together. Anyone that is a fan of the Rubik’s cube design will simply love this. It has been done so well that it makes it both a collector’s item and a stunning gift to a slightly older child. When thinking about age ranges, the published one is 8+ and I think that’s right here. My 8 year old needed a little bit of help with a couple of the things in the box, but my 10 year old was able to take it all on independently.

Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks from Marvin’s Magic is available to buy online here. At the time of writing it is priced at £24.99.

Disclaimer: We were sent the Rubik’s Amazing Box of Magic Tricks for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click through on them and buy anything I will receive a small commission, but it will cost you no more than if you had arrived at the site independently. Many thanks for any purchases you make. They are very much appreciated.

5 Second Rule

January 31, 2021 by Penny Leave a Comment

Lockdown 3 here in the UK has seen us continue our regular boardgame evenings over Skype with friends. We have however got into a bit of a rut with playing some of the classic old games, so in an attempt to shake things up a bit I went for a rummage in our pile of boardgames and pulled out something new from my charity shop purchases to try – 5 Second Rule.

Now this is a game that I saw demonstrated by University Games at a Toy Fair years ago and at the time I thought that it would work well as a podcast episode for the (now slightly neglected) HandI Pod. The version we played last night I picked up in a charity shop sometime before Covid and it looks like it was probably only played once as one of the sets of cards is still in its cellophane wrapping inside the box.

The general premise of the game is incredibly simple. Players have 5 seconds to name three of something. It could be “name three famous Michaels” or “name three magazines” or even “name three things that annoy you”. If they manage it they get to move one space along the board. If they don’t play goes around the board until all players have a turn. If one manages it then they get the point and it stops there. If no one can do it then the player who had the first go score the point. Play then moves on to the next player.

The five seconds is measured with a spiral timer in which a series of tiny ball bearings run down the tube. It makes a noise when you turn it over, but there’s no real noise when it finishes which made it a tad trickier when playing remotely as we just had to tell the other players when their time was up instead.

The board part of the game has just 12 spaces on it and the first player to get to the end is the winner. On the way there are two “danger zones” and if a player is in the danger zone and doesn’t manage to name three then they miss their next turn.

Incredibly simple really.

The only part of the game that we sometimes found a tad confusing was remembering whose turn it actually was. Whilst you might start with one player trying to answer, you can on some questions move around quite quickly and it then took us a while to figure out who had actually started answering.

An added twist to the game are that each player starts with two “switch” cards and two “pass on” cards. With each of these card types, the player has the opportunity to quickly play the card before they start answering once they have heard the question. The “switch” card allows them to be given a second question to respond to. Meanwhile the “pass on” card is used to pass their turn on to the next player around the table. If they manage to name three then they get the point, but if they don’t then the player who played the “pass on” card gets the points. Useful if it’s a subject that you know the next player has no clue about. Like football in my husband’s case!

Overall 5 Second Rule is a fun, simple game. It game us quite a few laughs. Naming three things might sound easy, but when the time pressure is on it’s much harder than you think. As the player who claims to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of football found when asked to name three England Football team managers! There’s a list here that you can check your answers against or just to swot up with before you play.

If anything we felt that the board could have been longer. With only 12 spaces on there it didn’t take that long for someone to get to the end. Good if you want a quick game, but if you’re planning a whole evening playing you might want to do a “best of 5” type competition instead.

Whilst the version of 5 Second Rule that we played was published by University Games it seems that newer versions are by Interplay. There has also been a flurry of different versions. For completeness here’s a list:

5 Second Rule – original version
5 Second Rule Jr – a children’s version aimed at age 6+
5 Second Rule Mini Game – a version without the board
5 Second Rule Spintensity – an electronic version that gives you new challenges on each turn

All the above are published by Interplay, but in addition I’ve also found an additional 18+ version, 5 Second Rule Uncensored by PlayMonster. Let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend you leave this version around the kids, but it would work perfectly for an adults games night, especially at something like a hen party.

Disclaimer: I paid for this game myself and received nothing for this post. The product links above are affiliate links. If you click through and buy anything it will cost you no more than if you’d arrived at the site on your own, but I will receive a small commission. Any purchases and subsequent commission are very much appreciated.