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The Tribune from Coshocton, Ohio • 41

Publication:
The Tribunei
Location:
Coshocton, Ohio
Issue Date:
Page:
41
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

i I -in CcmD 74 Get li fc too food wEh four erect bag. reel bcci, c.u.cz;2, chicken-fho tccfo that to dlnaor. One extra pound, free. Our unique process bakes twice as much fish, poultry and meat flavor into every morsel of Friskies cat dinners. That means double-delicious taste for your cat And double-delicious savings for you.

Save now on specially marked bags at participating stores. 4Vi LBS IE PWCE OF 1H 'UXdJUlS CWGOwto Company ----Uji-tfciMt. mt3atjk' THE COMEBACK OF BOARD GAMES IS BREAKING VIDEO'S MONOPOLY By Marion Long symbolic sanctuary, a refuge from the uncertainty of the outside world. The family is shut in, the world is shut out." Laura Leddy offers a less somber appraisal of the situation. She's a 35-year-old teacher of gifted children in Chicago, and she finished fourth in the Trivial Pursuit tournament.

Leddy thinks nostalgic feelings and all their attendant trivia are simply enjoyable. "It's a pleasure to collect a kind of 'mental she says. "If it's something you love an era you grew up in, sports, history, movies, whatever you treasure Experts trace the current board game craze to a new spirit of nostalgia. 3 ore than most people, the Pietrini family People Weekly, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Rock Trivia, Sixtomania, Solid Gold Music Trivia, TIME: the Game, TV Guide's TV Game, Super Quiz Super Quiz II, and Trivia Adventure (for trivia tots). Major board game manufacturers have also mounted aggressive campaigns for their classic products and have been seeing results.

Sales of games like Clue, Risk, Life, Candyland, Sorry, Parcheesi and Monopoly are much healthier this year than they were two years ago, according to the managing editor of Toy and Hobby World magazine, Rick Anguilla. What's more, Monopoly's creator, Parker Brothers, plans a big promotion for the game's 50th anniversary in 1985, which should boost sales even higher, according to the company's director of marketing, Dave Evancich. Experts believe the board game craze reflects changes in underlying values and attitudes. They can see two clear trends emerging: a return to traditional toys and games, and the renewed popularity of pastimes shared by both parents and children. Also, experts point out, most of the successful new board games center on nostalgia themes or trivia, a reflection of the ongoing nostalgia boom.

"Our growing fixation with nostalgia and trivia suggests that there is a current sense of cultural exhaustion," says Pennsylvania State University sociologist Roy C. Buck. "The house is turning into a futures game at best, while the board game is clearly the Game of the Week. Certainly a board game can be said to offer a more elegant way of showing off than, say, a game of football or Frogger. Yet it's like any other game.

When you compete, you want to win. "It helps to play with people who have a good sense of humor," says Nancy Balcer, who finished third in the Trivial Pursuit tournament. "Because the secret thing, the funny fact underneath the whole business, is that everyone deep down thinks or at least hopes that they are very intelligent. At the tournament finals 1 looked around the room, and you could see it on their faces. We didn't have finalists there, we had geniuses.

Everyone thinks they're top of the line." Edward Parker, past president of Parker Brothers, once said of Monopoly: "It's a game people like to play because they can clobber their best friends without doing any actual damage, and that's the basis for any successful game." Is Trivial Pursuit the new Monopoly or just a quick cash crop, like the Cabbage Patch dolls? Is America's interest in board games just a flirtation with some old-fashioned fun, or will the love last? These are questions to which no one. not even a tournament champion, has the answers yet. IW Manon Loan reports for our What in the World paep and is a frequent contnbulor to other national publications Before Pac Man, America played Parcheesi. heard a question in the final round and was forced into an agonizing 20-minute sudden-death overtime. Now something is happening here (as any good baby boomer would put it).

A board game tournament with 150,000 contestants? Families fighting over a board game? A board game so popular it's harder to find than a Cabbage Patch Kid at Christmas? Now, most of us grew up playing board games, and many of us were beguiled with them early on, as we dreamily pushed a gumdrop to Candyland. But as we grew older, we put away childish things. And children changed, too, so much so that with the dawning of the electronic '80s, the board games business found itself in great difficulty. Milton Bradley, creator of Candyland, tried to appeal to new-age whiz kids with the likes of Simon, a $30 wonder toy that uses sound and colored lights to play concentration and memory games with you. Sel-chow Righter, now triumphing with Trivial Pursuit, tried in those desperate days to refurbish their former flagship, Scrabble Brand Crossword Game, by fit ting it with alphanumeric displays and an electronic timer, the better to help you beat the brain.

"Board games were being written off because of video games," admits John Nason, Selchow Righter's vice president. "They were thought to be old-fashioned cardboard and plastic. The big manufacturers lost their nerve; they didn't see a future in board games. Trivial Pursuit proved that with the right product, board games are still a viable business." Indeed. In America, an estimated 20 million Trivial Pursuit sets were sold in 1984.

The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Holland and Germany already have their own adaptations. Editions are also due for Spain, Portugal, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Greece and India in their respective languages with their own cultural idiosyncracies. Moreover, Trivial Pursuit is spawning more spinoffs than Norman Lear, including Entertainment Tonight, Book of Lists, Golden Trivia Game's Major League Baseball Edition and MASH Edition, plains Elaine, a Pietrini by marriage. "We're a big Italian family, so everyone's talking. Talking over the questions, talking over the answers.

Singing the songs mentioned in the questions Sometimes it's more like a shouting match than a game, but it's always a lot of fun." For the Pietrinis, of Clarendon Hills, all that family frenzy has paid off. Last spring, Dennis and Elaine Pietrini went to Chicago, put their long, hard hours of training to the test in a Trivial Pursuit Tournament, and won it all: a trophy, TV coverage, and a trip to Europe. Winning the competition was hardly a trivial matter, however; the tournament drew over 150,000 entrants. Also, things got very tense indeed when Elaine mis j. loves 17 playing Trivial Pursuit.

And when they sit down to play, the board game becomes a game in the complete sense of the word: a competitive activity involving skill, chance and endurance. "I would think are we ever, ever going to get through this game," ex- drop in 1984; at least 20 percent of the nation's arcades have closed their doors for good. "Video games are bound to go through down periods," observes Nolan Bushnell, founder and chairman of Atari Inc. "Anyone could have predicted it. What we didn't know was how bad it would be." Video games once almost zapped the board game to death, and it could happen again.

After all, with computer sales constantly increasing, the ascendancy of video game entertainment seems inevitable. But for now, video looks like a every littie anecdote and anything to do with it." Others attribute the present popularity of board games to video game boredom. "People were simply burnt out with all the video stuff and wanted something to draw them away from all the electronic mayhem for a while," says a Milton Bradley salesman. "And today trivia is the hook that is catching them." In fact, the video game industry has suffered dramatic losses in the past year and a half. Earnings plunged 30 percent in the arcades during 1983 and continued to MANUFACTURER COUPON EXPIRES 73185 MANUFACTURER COUPON MUWLFACTIMEB COUPON I I I W-rr Friskies dry cat food.

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Pages Available:
792,543
Years Available:
1909-2024