Bloganuary – Day 4

What was your favorite toy as a child?

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I have so many happy memories of the toys I played with as a child. A little set of cardboard groceries, and Barbies little sisters (not Mattel toys are all).

My parents never had a lot of money, but we had a precious few family toys that were for all of us to play with – totem tennis, playing cards (we all knew how to play Canasta and Patience – aka, Solitaire) and I remember owning Squatter, an Australian board game a lot like Monopoly but with sheep stations.

And then we had Trouble.

Also known as Kimble and Frustration, Trouble plays a little like Parcheesi and Sorry. I have a vague recollection of us owning Sorry at one stage, but the big drawcard of Trouble was the nifty ‘Pop-O-Matic’ die container that was part of the game’s playing board.

The ‘Pop-O-Matic’ always fascinated me – and the die never went missing.

Our family would play this game for hours on end. It would be packed up and taken on holidays and camping trips and was always played in favour of cards or other games.

I never did grasp why other families didn’t own this game. So much hilarity went into chasing the other players around the board and desperately trying to get all your pieces ‘home’ to be the winner.

Trouble was like an unpaid babysitter keeping us occupied especially during school holidays when we’d play with one eye on the game and the other eye on Sesame Street, Play School, and/or The Electric Company. School holidays were the only time we got to watch these children’s TV shows.

But you couldn’t pay too much attention to the television otherwise you may have found yourself ‘in trouble’ with your pieces inexplicably moved to places of disadvantage.

We’d laugh and squeal and (more often than not) yell at each other for cheating. Mind, the board game never criticise us for fighting, it just patiently waited for the arguments to be over and for us to start playing again.

Oh, the memories 😂

I’m thinking I may have to source a new copy and reintroduce it to my daughters.

I don’t have any photos to share, but I found this funky YouTube video on how to play.

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