Shrieks and Spiders

Are you within approximately five years of my age (23. Sad, I know.) AND someone who read as a child? If so, then you'll probably draw some connection to today's spotlight item. Hell, maybe you will anyways. It's a small world, after all.

What I have today is a

Goosebumps Shrieks and Spiders Game!

Shrieks. And spiders.

Being a lifelong horror fiend, the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stein were the perfect thing to read in the Second Grade. For a while, it seemed like everyone was reading them. It was hard not to, with the scary covers and intriguing names, such as "The Cuckoo Clock of Doom," "It Came From Beneath the Sink," "The Beast from the East," and, of course, "The Horror at Camp Jellyjam."

Many of the books were adapted into half hour bits for a Goosebumps TV show, which I believe played on Fox Kids. The show was pretty good, but I always thought "Are You Afraid of the Dark" was better. It was really a matter of preference, I suppose.

Reading the books today, they seem extremely short and on the predictable side, but that's to be expected. After all, they're kids books, and for kids, they're worthwhile, or at least they were in the 90's. The important thing is that kids were reading.

As far as the game goes, it looks like it could be fun. The back of the box makes it sound like a real gem:
"Do you see the MUMMY -- or the DUMMY? Stay calm. Flip. Is that the MONSTER -- or the HAMSTER? (Did you just feel a cold draft?) Flip again...
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! It's CURLY the Skeleton!"
I bet you wish you had this game.

For some reason, this.

Upon opening the box, I was like, "Sweet! POGs!" Apparently, you use POGs for part of the game. I'm surprised they're all still with the game. I'm sure plenty of kids soon abandoned the rest of the game in favor of the POGs and began using them to gamble on the playground. In fact, I'm pretty sure I won a couple of these same POGs off of a kid back in the day, with my awesome slammer-jammer skills. If you don't know anything about POGs, then just pretend.

The game is basically all about flipping cards, grabbing POGs and plastic spiders, shouting "Goosebumps!" and not much else, which are pretty much all the necessary elements of greatness. I haven't actually read the rules, but from what I've gathered, that's the gist of it.

The game looks to have been passed around, but I'm not gonna make a hooker joke. Anyways, it's hard to know how much something costs when there are three different price tags from what are clearly three different businesses. I knew which one was the St. Vinnie's tag, but just to be sure, I covered up the less appealing prices with another item when I placed it on the checkout. Such tactics never hurt a smart consumer.

Cost of Goosebumps Shouting POG Spider Game: $.74

I'm feeling a bit hungry at the moment, so I'm gonna go out and munch some brain. That's all, folks.

Ah, gifts.

Well it's spring break for NMU students, and while many of my student peers are escaping to a tropical paradise, I've been making the best of my free time at home, playing Nintendo and having an adventure all my own. I said I'd post something this week, so here goes.

When I arrived at the home of my good friends Kara and Orion last Thursday, they informed me that they had a present for me, and then handed me this.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Power Board Game!

Wow, what a beauty. I mean, there is almost nothing wrong with this game. Everything is there, and the biggest damage is a little bend in part of the box. No biggie. My guess is that this game was used maybe a couple of times before being forgotten in a games closet for years until it was time to clean it out. Since this game is from '87, chances are it hasn't been played in twenty years.

 The game itself is okay. The objective is to use your good guy cards to defeat bad guy cards on the board, collect a certain number of each, and then have a final showdown with the Technodrome. Where the problem comes in is with this thing:

Turtle not included.

To do battle, you have to land the die in the correctly numbered square. To defeat the Technodrome, you need to land a 1, 2, and 3, and you have only four tries to do it. Needless to say, nobody defeated the Technodrome when we played. I got to the point of battling it a couple times, but to no avail. I was lucky if I got two numbers by the fourth flip. We gave up disappointed. However, we were playing on carpet, and when I tried the flipper on a hard wood floor, I was able to accomplish the task with relative ease. I guess it's all about where you try it.

When I was putting all of the pieces into the box after taking the pictures, I found something interesting buried in the bottom. It was an old birthday card.

Somebody gave this to their special nephew as a birthday present and the card was put back into the box and forgotten. The inside reads "... From takeoff to landing! Happy Birthday" and is signed, "Uncle Jack, Aunt Pat, Grandpa." Unfortunately there's no year on the card, and no name of who the card was given to. Judging by the semi-yellowed color of the card, it has indeed been hidden inside the box for some time. Perhaps some of these people are dead and gone by now. Even if that is the case, they bought someone a cool birthday present once, and for that, they'll be remembered. Since it was also a gift for me years later, I'll just pretend that I'm the nephew.

Cost of TMNT Board Game: A gift! Thanks, Kara and Orion!

That's about all I got for now. I gotta get back to my vacation from book learnin'.