Weird Board Game Commercials
Board games are cool – but sometimes their TV commercials are even cooler. Or weirder. And you know how those commercials just kind of stick in your head forever? While were feeling reminiscent, here’s a few that come to mind. Click the links to watch the commercial!
Don’t Wake Daddy
Don’t Wake Daddy is a board game with a pretty weird concept: move around the board, and avoid triggering the game’s interactive gadget (the sleeping dad on the board). While playing, you’re supposed to press the alarm clock to snooze if he gets close to waking up. It’s basically like Operation, but without having to cut anything open. They could’ve easily released a second version called, “Don’t Step on the Creaking Floorboard at 3AM”
Nightmare
Nightmare was released in 1991, and it was an attempt at a horror-themed board game that didn’t quite work as well as as they’d hoped conceptually – the best thing about the game is the ad. It’s great for scaring the daylights out of children, and we can’t imagine from the ad why anyone would think that this is a great game for their kids – although we’re sure some readers might have received this as a gift at the time.
Girl Talk Date Line
Girl Talk Date Line is a great board game, only if you want to demonstrate everything that’s wrong with the world of gaming when it comes to gender-bias. The entire premise of the game is teenage dating – and that’s already a terrible idea for a board game, and also kind of creepy at the same time. This game involves tapes with conversations somehow related to the game, die, rules, and “Teen” cards that you’re supposed to match up to get dates. No, no and just no.
Donald Trump the Board Game
There isn’t much we can say about this one: Trump: The Game is a game with the now-president’s face on the box, although he wasn’t president when this happened – and good luck explaining this to your grandkids one day if you happen to own one of these and they dig it out of storage in the future.
Goosebumps: Terror in the Graveyard
If you grew up with the Goosebumps series at all or if you’re only discovering it now thanks to the movie series starring Jack Black, this game stands out – and can make for a great addition to your bookshelf or collection of creepy dolls (hey, some people actually have those and we ain’t judgin’).
Jumanji
Jumanji is worth noting here just because it’s one of the classic board game movies of all time – and anyone who collects board games will likely want a copy of this somewhere in their collection. The first game was released back in 1995, and the game doesn’t actually contain lions, tigers, bears or any of the bizarre events from the movie, and we’re glad it doesn’t… And, of course with the release of the updated Jumanji movie (whether you loved it or hated it), came a second Jumanji board game released in 2017.
Mall Madness
Mall Madness is another game that we can throw right into the same class as Girl Talk Date Line. It’s weird, supposedly aimed at gaming girls – but made by people who knew absolutely nothing about what girls or women of any age would want. It’s truly terrible, and the object of the game is to make it around the “mall” while you shop – and that’s pretty much it.
The Grape Escape
The Grape Escape is actually a great concept: your game piece is made out of clay, and the whole premise of the game is escaping all sorts of tortures that might befall your grape in the game. The ad is pretty violent, but luckily only towards, well, play-doh grapes.
Dare
Dare looks like a game that happens if you mashed together your local bridge game with your local swinger’s club – and even the ad is enough to tell you why you shouldn’t. The ad really makes it seem naughty and fun, but playing any kind of game like this with anyone you actually know is generally a bad idea and you might as well just play Monopoly and hate each other instead.
Snardvark
Snardvark was released in 1992, and it’s another one of those nineties gems that some might remember getting as a gift. How great are your kids with anthropomorphic animals that look something like the animal it’s meant to resemble but doesn’t at the same time? If that scares them, then you should probably avoid playing Snardvark – and make sure they don’t see the ad. It’s a little scary, even to us.
Toilet Trouble
If farts and toilet-humor are funny, they logically must make a great concept for a board game, right? Someone at Hasbro seemed to think so, and came up with a game called Toilet Trouble. It’s one of those games that requires a gadget to play, and that gadget is a toilet. The tagline for this one is “Which flush will cause the gush?”. We’re still surprised that it was made by Hasbro in the first place.
There’s also one called Don’t Step in It, because why not?
