Board To Death

Released in 1992 by The Parker Brothers, Don't Wake Daddy is a simple game meant for children ages 3 and up for 2-4 players. It takes about 20 minutes to play, and I remember the commercials for this very vividly. This was one of the board games that got constant commercial airtime during cartoon blocks, and because of that I have an extremely vivid memory of it playing seemingly nonstop. It's actually one of the very few board game commercials I can recall with absolute clarity, though that shouldn't be too surprising, considering how little board games were advertised after 2002. Designed by Roger Ford (the artist remains unknown), a man who had virtually no career other than this game, it's got an extremely basic concept: players move by drawing cards and moving to the matching space. If you land on a picture-number space then you have to risk waking Daddy. Daddy is in his bed, a spring-loaded molded plastic gizmo. If you did something that might cause him to s...

Dogfight is, right off the bat, presented by absolutely killer artwork. But it's also presented by a rather honest combination of words, "American Heritage". It's true, the only thing more American than fighting in a war is starting a war. It's our national past time. Baseball? Nah, fuck Baseball. War is what we here in the USofA strive for. Like Screamin' Eagles, we have yet another plane fight board game, but unlike Screamin' Eagles this one is based in World War 1 and not whenever the hell Screamin' Eagles is supposedly based. I'm gonna go ahead and say in the 80s, and the Cold War, just to make it more interesting. Released in 1962 by Milton-Bradley under their American Heritage line of the Command Decision series of board games, with art by Charles H. Hubbell, it's a 45 minute game that can have up to 4 players and, much like Screamin' Eagles two decades later, also utilizes cards because, well, it's a board game and you kind of ne...

Ask anyone of my age - I'm 31 for context - and they'll tell you that Jumanji was one of their favorite movies growing up. It's considered a modern classic for a reason, even despite its very few degraded visual effects, the movie holds up as a relic of childhood nostalgia for anyone from the 90s. I, for one, know that I watched the hell out of it as a kid, and I know tons of people who would easily say the same. Even for someone like myself, the rare Robin Williams nonfan (don't get bent out of shape, I don't dislike the guy, I was just never gaga like everyone else) I can recognize how necessary his role to the films central success was, and why it wouldn't have worked without him. Despite playing a part of something so bizarre, he also gave this fantastical film a very grounded reality because he himself is simply so welcoming as a person. But of course, where would a movie be without its tie ins, and I dare to say that Jumanji had perhaps one of the greatest...

  Candy Land is considered a classic, and for good, albeit somewhat confusing, reasons. Despite being easily the most "child accessible" board game there is, Candy Land was not a game that I played all that much. I remember playing it from time to time, but those memories are extremely vague and it certainly wasn't a board game that got played anywhere near as much as the others from my closet as I got older. But it's considered a child accessible game because there's simply not much strategy or difficulty to it whatsoever; players are never required to make any choices and instead just follow directions, and the winner is ultimately predetermined by the shuffle of the cards. But what if I were to tell you that Candy Land has undergone massive changes, thusly creating lore and almost having a feature film based off of it? Remember a few years ago when we started to hear news about feature films being based off board games? There was talk of a Monopoly movie, and B...