Booby Trap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Booby Trap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                             This all goes back to Saturday night, which was Halloween.  I was riding home on the subway, eager to get inside where I knew I would be safe, with my beloved, when I spotted a man seated across from me, with some wooden contraption, resembling, to me, at least, the "Booby Trap" game board.

                              This game, one of the earliest interactive games from Parker Brothers, appeared in 1965.  So, it was fifty years old now; can you believe it?  You better believe I owned it, and "Avalanche" too.  And it was this guy across from me, who triggered the memories of both games.

                               But those memories are vastly different.  "Avalanche" was all plastic and fun, and it had a technological, mathematical component to it, which eluded me, but did understand to be there.

                                Booby Trap was a much different game.  Not only was it a game of skill, it was also dangerous.  The board was wood, it had a pole, connected to a spring, that pulled back so you could put the wood pieces on the board.  When the trap was sprung, the spring snapped and things went flying.

                                 Which was not bad, in and of itself.  But, before long, early generations of children were being menaced by this game.  Kids would snap the thing at one another, threatening to snap their fingers off, and sometimes fingers were injured, when kids sprung it on others, like a glorified mouse trap.  In its own way, "Booby Trap" was a dangerous game; as dangerous, in its own way, as "Time Bomb," by Milton Bradley, which I have written about, on here.

                                    What were the makers thinking when these games were made?  Did they really have no sense, or was there a component of Disney sadism to them?

                                       Think about it, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!