Released in 1976 by Milton Bradley, with absolutely no designer or artist credits that can be dug up, Breaker 19: The CB Truckers Game is easily one of the oddest board games I've seen thus far, and that includes things like Squatter. Imagine Truck Driving Simulator but in board game fashion. According to Board Game Geek, it's extremely straight forward and sounds somewhat bland:
Players move around the board delivering loads and trying to earn money to pay off their "rigs". The rules are printed on the inside of the box top, and the components are relatively light - two types of cards, player markers, and play money.
Not to mention they only have 3 photos of this game, when they usually have a good few handful of photos for each game I cover. That's how exceedingly unknown this thing is. In fact, when doing research for this post, I began to question whether or not there was even enough to work with to warrant an entire post about it, but I have dedicated myself to being a historian of crap nobody cares about, and that includes - apparently - ancient and unknown trucker based board games, so here we are.
At least the box has pretty detailed artwork, so whoever they got to design that did a decent job.
The board, as well, is actually fairly visually engaging. It isn't as straight forward or simplistic as you may have imagined it to be, and is actually somewhat worthy of looking at. Instead of the usual "get from one place to another" style of track we're used to seeing, this board actually makes everything go in a circle, almost like Monopoly, which I suppose makes sense if you're trying to pay off your rig and delivering loads.
Still, who would've thought that Breaker 19 of all board games would be one of the few obscure titles with a truly unique board experience? I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't see that coming. The whole thing though, the box and board combined, certainly reeks of the decade it was released in. The colors, the visuals, the whole shebang. It's all so very 70s, and not really in a good way, not that anything related to that decade is too fondly remembered. Still, credit has to be given where it is due, and boy howdy was I pleased as punch to see that something this obscure, this odd, had such interesting visual style. It at least makes discussing it, if not playing it I would imagine, far more worthwhile.
Sadly, I can't find pictures of the player markers, but I would hope to god they're trucks, otherwise what is the point, right?
Actually, in this write up I did manage to scrape up of it, on a blog much better than my own, it seems as though the game is pretty boring, and what a shocker, really, and that, sadly, the player markers were in fact trucks but only in the most basic sense. They're merely images of trucks on a little plastic board you move around, not actual 3D representations of trucks outright, so again, what a letdown. Still, historically, I have to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that it's neat someone took the time to try anything and everything when it came to concepts. Board games are generally lacking in originality or variety, with most being blatant rip offs of a more popular game, and while that's perhaps more financially safe (I mean, do you see anyone playing new versions of this today? Yeah, neither do I), I can't help but admit that it's cool to see someone take a risk and try something different. After all, that's what artistry is all about, and that's what I consider these board games to be, art.
The game says it's for ages 8 to 14, but I can't help but wonder what kind of 8 year old would want to play this instead of watch cartoons and what kind of 14 year old would want to play this instead of literally whatever else it was 14 year olds did back in 76. There had to be better options, right? I almost guarantee no child of any age was clamoring to play Breaker 19, unless perhaps they were just really into trucks.
Breaker 19 is a really unique game purely for the fact that it exists at all, and I think that's worthy of note. Milton Bradley did seem like they were, at one point in time, just throwing darts at notecards on a wall to see what might work and then pumping that out, but even then they had a myriad of absolutely odd choices. After all, they also were responsible for Town Dump, so maybe it was for the best that they scaled back in later years. When you get down to "landfill" and "truckers" as game options, perhaps you really are scraping the bottom of the waste barrel you're hauling. Nonetheless, I applaud Breaker 19 for existing in general, especially in such a rough market and especially in the 70s, when anything succeeding was shocking. God, I can only imagine growing up as a teenage girl then, and my only options for Saturday night are Disco and Breaker 19. I'd probably pick Breaker 19, and not because I don't like Disco because I do, but if only for the novelty.
Disco waxes eternal.
Breaker 19 was not so lucky.
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