Golden Sunsets - 50 Years of Memories - Part 1 - 1967

So this is an indulgence. I'm turning fifty years old later in 2017. Around 18,250 days. Over twenty-six million minutes. A huge milestone for someone that back in 1977 thought that thirty was ancient. To celebrate the fact that I'm now officially an eldster, I'm going to pick one thing from each of the last fifty years of my life that brings back happy memories. It could be music, a film, a toy, a book - basically anything that either came out in that year or was around at the time. I'm also going to list some of the odd trivia from that particular twelve month period.

Fifty years. Fifty short posts (I'm taking two weeks off for a holiday around the actual day I reach the golden year).

Of course my recall of those first few years of life is hazy - to be honest it's probably nonexistent and it's the memory cheating - but for the purposes of this list let's assume I remember this stuff. We kick off with the 'Summer of Love':

1967:

The trivia:

• According to Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, you can be arrested for a crime committed anywhere in the known universe. The United States and Russia also signed a declaration agreeing not to nuke the Moon.
• On 3rd September, Sweden switched to driving on the right side of the road.
• In January, the Beatles recorded a 14-minute avant-garde piece, "Carnival of Light", that remains unreleased to this day.
• The Parker Brother "Ouija Board" sold two million copies - more than "Monopoly".
• In September, the body of a tramp called Bailey was found in a derelict house in London, A blue flame was clearly seen emanating from a slit in his stomach. In later years I will become fascinated with these cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion.

The item: 

KerPlunk

Okay so I'm clearly cheating right from the start - there is no way that I could have played this most famous of games when I was less than twelve months old, but it came out in 1967 and it's my list, so...

It doesn't matter how much technology we have at our finger tips, what realistic virtual worlds we can plug ourselves into - there is nothing quite so satisfying as your younger brother simply pulling on a plastic stick and watching as all the marbles clatter to the ground (well into a plastic tray). It's also a perfect example of game onomatopoeia - the sound of the marbles is the name on the box !

In summary "KerPlunk" is meant to be a game of skill and hand-eye coordination. Inside the bright blue box you got a yellow plastic tube, thirty thin sticks and thirty-two coloured marbles. Plus a base with numbers on it. You have to insert the sticks through the tiny holes in the yellow tube to form a web of plastic. Then you pour the marbles in at the top. Players then take it in turns to remove one stick without letting any of the marbles fall through. If they do, that player collects them. Once the last marble had fallen, everybody counts up their marbles and the person with the fewest is the winner. You needed a steady hand as you slowly (or quickly) pulled out your stick !

In reality it's not so much skill that was needed as the ability to learn a bit of spatial reasoning  - as you tried to figure out which sticks were holding up which marbles - plus quite a lot of luck. It's a game that's simple enough for small children to understand yet still fun for those a bit older, until I guess they progressed onto more challenging version of the concept such as "Jenga".

The version pictured above is the same as the  one we had at home and I remember playing endlessly with my family and friends. I think we first got the game as a present on November 5th - otherwise known in our house as Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night. Yes, I am aware that November 5th is traditionally the night for fireworks, but in our household, we were usually given the choice of having a few meagre whizz bangs and some sparklers (that would last 15 minutes tops) or a board game of some kind (which we got to enjoy all year). Probably two out of three times we'd pick the game - so we got to play "Haunted House" or "Escape From Colditz" or "Sorry!". All classics.

"KerPlunk" is one of those games which will never go away. My own children had a set and now my younger sisters children are playing the same wonderful game (although she was never as mad about it as I was). It seems there have been endless variations in style and colour over the decades, including what looks like one with a spiral ramp. That feels like sacrilege to me ! How are you going to get that authentic "KerPlunk" sound?

Although it's not the favourite game from my childhood (I'll probably get to that in a few weeks), it's certainly near the top.