Computer chips and batteries have made much of kid’s play an electronic spectator sport, but there are signs of some pushback. Retailers are offering a variety of vintage-style games, and many baby boomers are seeking out the toys they remember fondly — puzzles, board games and the like.
Board games are always a big seller, “but in the last couple of years, they’ve really been popular,” says Steven Josephson, owner of the Toy Box in Mamaroneck, N.Y. “People remember the old-fashioned games like Monopoly, Stratego, Sorry, and want their own kids to play them. Parcheesi has come way back this year.”
Wild & Wolf’s Ridley’s collection of vintage-style games features many old favorites, including marbles, jacks and tumbling blocks. The package designs are retro, too: cardboard or tin boxes, muted colors, early 20th-century-style lithography.
Hasbro has teamed up with Target this holiday season to offer classic board games in wooden boxes, including Life, Clue, Risk and Scrabble.
If you’re interested in the actual, original board games you played as a kid, you’ll find sources online.
Los Angeles–based game collector Desi Scarpone has been an aficionado of board games since he was young and rues the day he let his mom get rid of his old ones. Scarpone, author of “Board Games” and “More Board Games,” sells games from the 1940s through the 1990s on his website (www.4gamesgoneby.com). They include some rare ones like 1951’s Space Pilot, 1967’s the Monkees, 1939’s Pinocchio and a copy of the only Beatles game ever made, Flip Your Wig.
“There’s been a steady resurgence in vintage board game popularity for the last several years. The children of my generation have children of their own, and they want them to feel the same joy and excitement they originally felt when playing these games,” says Scarpone.
While today’s game graphics tend to scream for attention, “People respond to the innocence of the artwork they remember in a vintage game,” he notes.
Vintage Game World has a comprehensive array of mid-century games. Old faves like Aggravation, Monopoly, Hi-Q and Careers are offered alongside Easy Money, Acquire and Stock Market (“Anyone can make a million!”). Before there were Gears of War or Battlefield, you could play Tobruk, a war strategy game based in World War II North Africa; or Arab-Israeli Wars, where you re-enact tank battles; or the classic Risk.
The site (www.vintagegameworld.com) also has games that exploited TV culture of the ’60s and ’70s: Man From U.N.C.L.E., Happy Days, I Spy, Six Million Dollar Man.
If you’re lucky enough to still own an old favorite but misplaced some parts, they’ve got a substantial inventory. And if your instructions are long lost, you may find them here, too.