LOOSE GAME AND TOY PARTS FILLED MY JUNK DRAWERS

Loose toy parts and game parts are the small change of most 

toy collectors.

There is usually tons of the stuff in any collection.

Here's some I acquired about 15 years ago.

Some stuff I recognise, some I don't.

The arm is from Mighty Mike the Dickie robot.

Even though log gone I am particularly interested in what the red-tipped space rifle is? Anyone?

Kev suggests that the above yellow part is maybe the sight off the Merit Sonic Ray Gun below [ picture: Amazon]

The rings are old plastic monster rings and belonged to Bill.

In here I can see Batman and a pig jigsaw pieces?

Alongside Worzel we have a figure identified not too long ago on MB, a Fisher Price Construx Man.

At the back is a yellow game part from the Jekyll and Hyde board game. Not sure why I blocked out some parts. I think the picture was used as a Buy It Now parts listing in my old Ebay shop in the mid Noughties.

No clues as to what these are from!

Brian F has spotted that the coloured game pieces might be from Parcheesi

Spot anything you recognise readers?

BRIAN'S BIGFOOT!

Hi Woodsy,

Here's an old board game I've had since the 70s. The object is to avoid being stomped by Bigfoot!

Good for cold Winter evenings.Popcorn and hot chocolate are highly recommended. 

BrianF 

NJ USA

TONY K'S TRIBUTE TO STAN LEE

Hi Woodsy,

this is my tribute to a man whose creations captivated me as a kid and stayed with me throughout life. God bless dear ol' Stan.

Tony K

UK

STAN LEE HAS DIED!

I was saddened to read in today's press that Stan Lee has died this week.

Mr. Marvel himself brought joy to countless millions over many many decades and its hard to imagine that he's gone.

Despite stepping down from Marvel and becoming their Chairman Emeritus a long time ago he was at the forefront of comicdom always and right up to the present day into his 90's.

Only last month I think I spotted him in the movie Venom.

Thousand of tributes will flood all media this week but I just wanted to pay my own respects to Stan the Man myself.

My condolences to his daughter and family.

Excelsior and RIP Stan, forever the fifth member of the Fantastic Four!

See you in Valhalla.

4D 4TH DIMENSION BOARD GAME:: VIEWS FROM THE ORIGINAL 1977 FOCUS GROUP

In 2009 I sold an old game to a chap, A.M. The game and the chap turned out to have a story and A.M has kindly shared it with the blog:

I was at A-level stage in about 1979/1980, and despite trying to do boring school stuff, I was also one of the first people in the UK to build my own home computers and program them, and this was before you could buy any type of off he shelf 'home computer. 

There wasn’t much you could do with them as there wasn’t an established market for games or software. So I used to have to program my own games, in machine code or basic. I was a keen addict at the local games arcade, so writing space invaders and asteroids was an obvious target. 

Myself and a few of my friends formed a weird little group that would now be called the geeksquad or similar (!) and we all used to get involved with unusual activities, often with the school teachers encouraging our little group to do things that all the 1,500 kids couldn’t be bothered to take interest in.

The teachers at school kept an interest in what we were doing, because no one knew anybody who was doing anything like it. But we also used to play various board games, like chess and Halma. 

One day our maths teacher ( A Mrs Ball …) approached me and a few friends who played chess, and told us how one of her relatives had invented a new kind of chess with a 'star trek' style time-warp / time-delay element built in. 

If you look at the original 1966 Star trek series, you will sometimes see Spock playing a weird looking version of chess with a variety of platforms up one side of the board. It was a kind of 3D chess board. Pieces get moved onto the platforms and shifted along one platform per turn, or something like that. 

Eventually they pop out of their "time warp" and can be placed back on the main board somehow. I am convinced that the chap who invented 4D was inspired by both chess and the star trek version. 

Anyway, we were all asked to play the game a few times according to the rules he had set, although he wanted feedback as to any good ideas to improve things or comments on things that were annoying. 

We all found the game quite good fun. But I never knew what happened to it after it went to market, so seeing it on ebay the other day was great, and of course I bought it!

So, there you go. A tale of 4D from 30 yrs ago! 

Cheers, A.M

Postscript: According to BoardGameGeek the game was released by J.A. Ball and Co in the UK and licensed to TSR in the US. The game was reviewed in White Dwarf magazine issue 3 in 1977. I adore the cover on this!

The contents of this magazine are themselves reviewed on BoardGameGeek, where the 4th Dimension game is called 4AD.

The US 1979 TSR version is reviewed on You Tube by Board Game Museum.

CREEPYPASTA: THE GHOSTS IN THE GAME

Sometimes I think that youngsters live in a separate world to me. I wonder if you do?

Take for instance a conversation I had recently with a young teenager about the modern computer game of Minecraft.

Now, bearing in mind I've never played a single computer or video game in my life, trying to understand the minutiae of Minecraft is no small challenge, especially when its being explained without the use of a computer.

I've discovered many things about this game, which one day will be a vintage memory for today's grown generation and a must-have on Ebay in 2038!

For me one of the most peculiar facets of the game is the concept of ... wait for it .... Creepypasta. 

Creepypasta, as far as I understand it, is a collective noun describing various nefarious beings that can appear from time to time. In other words, bad dudes who you don't wanna mess with on account of their scariness.

Minecraft creepypasta appears to focus on three main characters [apologies for any mistakes here]:

Herobrine: an almost god-like figure

Error 303: an elusive ghost-like creature

The Null: a dark being living in the shadows

The most interesting element of Creepypasta for me however is the seepage of urban legends into it. In particular, according to my source, Slenderman is a Creepypasta.

Slenderman is one of those urban youth crazes like Killer Clowns which bob up from the hormonal teenage tumult from time to time. Getting fat on success, Slenderman has even got his own movie this year.

If I was to suggest a new Creepypasta then it would be the Judderman, a spiky goblin who appeared in a Metz, a cold beer [?] TV advert years ago. He flickered behind the nordic forest's trees making him even more sinister. A creepy jagged woodland sprite!

Which urban legend would you put forward to the Creepypasta recruitment committee?

WHATS YOUR FAVOURITE GAME?

It could be a board game, cards, an outdoor kids game, an RPG, a computer game.

Mine's Haunted House, the board game.

What's yours?

WADDINGTON'S BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN: THOSE WONDERFUL PLASTIC HORSES

My older Brother had a beautiful board game when I was a kid in the Sixties.

Battle of the Little Big Horn.

It was made by Waddingtons of Leeds in the UK.

Despite the grim subject matter the box was gorgeous and one of my favourites.

The thing I loved the most were the plastic figures of cowboys and indians on horseback. They were great to play the game with.

I thought they were fantastic.

On BoardGameGeek they come a bit closer

Last year I posed the question as to whether they were made by Waddingtons or were they made by another company like Timpo or Britains? Did Waddingtons have the wherewithal to manufacture plastic figures like this?

The ever-knowledgable Hugh of Small Scale World provided the answer:

They were made (supplied) by Rojas e Malaret, so may be manufactured by someone like Pech or Reamsa

H

Best Blog on the subject;

http://grandesbatallasdelmundo.blogspot.com/search/label/LITTLE%20BIG%20HORN

Have you got a version of this game readers?

Are the horses of the same origin as those issued by Multiple Toymakers for their Planet of the Apes carded and boxed sets does anyone know?

Like this cool rack toy Target Set I bought at the NEC about 18 years ago.

Here's another Apes horse close up