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Swack!

 
You know, back in my day, our folks used to just beat us with a stick if we were misbehavin'. Now they're puttin' kids hands into giant mousetraps! Oh how the times have changed. Released in 1968, "Swack!" - which sounds more like a junk food with a radical name in the 90s than a board game - was released by Ideal, and...well...that's kind of all we know. In fact, according to Board Game Geek, there's no credit for a designer, no age range indicated, and the game only runs 10 minutes, probably because that's how long it takes for a childs fingerbones to break into pieces. On a humorous note (heh, bone puns), one of the mechanisms listed for the game on BGG is "Hand Management", which might be one of the single funniest word pairings I've ever read.

The description of the game is as follows:

Swack is Ideal's wacky, new game that's loaded with action. What happens when you take the cheese off the giant trap...just wait and see. You might move ahead on the big cheese scoreboard or you might move back if the trap goes swack. On a player's turn he or she can take up to 3 pieces of cheese from the pan. The player must take at least 1 piece of cheese from the pan. A player gains 3 points for each large piece of cheese and 1 point for each small piece of cheese taken. If the trap springs, the player springing the trap loses 10 points. Players take turns removing cheese until someone springs the trap- then all of the cheese taken is replaced and the trap is reset. When a player reaches the end of the scoring track- the game ends immediately.

Imagine calling a game where you convince a toddler to break their hand "wacky". Ideal, you guys are some sick fucks. The premise is actually incredibly simplistic, which might help make sense of why there's no age range indicated because it's so simple a soon to be crippled baby could figure it out. Really, it's kind of like a more sadistic "Mouse Trap"; less elaborate, less creative artistically and focused on child mangling!

And it's not even a board! "Swack!" straddles the line between board game and toy that we've seen on occasion here, like with "Beware The Spider" (another game where you're just outright traumatizing children, come to think of it), but it was so bizarre that I felt I had to include it here. It's almost cartoonish, how large and absurd the whole thing is. I can't imagine any parent setting this up for their kids and then walking away, but I guess this is from the 60s, when kids were often left to their own devices to play with things like fire crackers and...and...lawnmowers. I don't know what kids do. Regardless, "Swack!" just seems like it's a lawsuit waiting to happen, really, kind of like Lawn Darts. That being said, the box art is pretty solid, and overall - despite its general looking cheapness - the mouse trap itself looks pretty cool. That bright red juxtaposed against the tiny yellow cheese slices makes the colors of both pop beautifully. The kids on the box art, of course, look way too thrilled to be sticking their hands into a giant mousetrap. Then again, kids are kinda dumb.

So overall, there just isn't much to say about "Swack!", another than it sounds like a slang term writers for Nickelodeon would think hip teens would use. Now I can't help but picture some goofy teen saying, "That's swack, yo!". There isn't a lot of history, there isn't a lot of information and frankly there aren't even all that many photos to pull from and explore in depth. In fact, these were the best I managed to come up with, and I couldn't even find a photo of the back! If we're being honest, I think this country started to go down the tubes when we stopped coming up with names for sound effects and then using them in ridiculous places, such as this. The lack of Swack in the country has really doomed us to a life of pure mediocrity.

So that's Swack. Sorry this is such a short post, but it isn't my fault. I looked high and low for any kind of material for this game, but there just wasn't any. It really does appear to be one of the most forgotten - and perhaps rightfully so - board games we've covered. I promise that next weeks will be better. Until then, I'll just remain grateful I didn't grow up in the 60s, because if this was what was geared towards children, then dear god, no wonder so many of them grew up as hippies, advocating for peace.

Getting your fingers broken on the regular would do that to a person.

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