bored with your boards?

our family is not especially traditional except for when it comes to Christmas, and one of those annual traditions is the board game, usually met by groans by some but always ends up being a laugh.  A new one is added every year and for the past few years they have been murder, as in murder mystery games.  Agatha Christie’s Trivial Pursuits which has the most random questions and we are avid Agatha Christie fans, but these are for real geeks.  Then there was the vintage Clue video game, a jem of a find on etsy, now this was a classic vintage purchase, luckily we still have a VCR lurking around somewhere and if you’re not amused by the costumes and set then you certainly will be by the acting.  For this year there are a number of possibilities which have yet to have been voted on from Orient Express taken straight from Agatha obviously, then there’s the TV detectives of Kojak, Columbo or Murder she Wrote?  We could all eat lollipops whilst playing Kojak I suppose and have back runs of the show in the background or listen to these records, truly themed game playing.  And how exactly does the Columbo game work you move around the board psychologically teases the murderer until the little board piece breaks down and confesses, we’d have to wear macs too?  There really are some hilarious vintage board games to collect though,  Bride Bingo  if you’re organising a hen weekend, or What shall i wear for the fashionistas and my favourite find ‘ Social Security...is getting along with people’ where nobody loses! Not sure many of us would agree with that in light of the condition of modern day social security systems.

And just one more thing…

Was it Miss Scarlett in the kitchen with the frying pan?

no silly…there is no frying pan but a gun and a knife rather than a revolver and a dagger, which took some time to get used to whilst playing an american vintage find of a game…

from JellyfishJunk vintage site, San Francisco.

yes clue (if you’ve seen the film you’ll know) but on a video game.  I love the vintage illustrations on the box of everyone marvelling over the sight of the vhs player (so compact) didn’t anyone tell them you don’t have to sit that close to the screen or the vhs for it to work.  Anyway it has complete farcical actors and acting. it also has a funny red 3d card that you decipher the mysteries’ solutions with! (so no cheating by taking a quick peek). Obviously there’s the usual femme fatale of miss scarlett with some great dress gloves and cigarette holders.  there is also miss peach who is young and supposedly french and does wear a rather nice fifties cocktail dress, unfortuately her whole ensemble is just a little what is that word? hmm peach! Anyway I love it and over champagne in vintage babycham glasses, lots of cheese and truffles it is vintage whodunnit paradise and I actually got to be miss scarlett and won if only once…hands off…this one is mine, but you can find another one on etsy at retroclassics.

the treasury in question…

who dunnit? by pinkmilkvintage.

who dunnit?

for my love of all things murderous:  mystery, detective, film noir, hitchcock, the queen of crime (you know who), sherlock holmes, midsomer murders, cluedo. especially the recurrent theme of everyone stranded in a house…alone…cut off…you know the drill classic Christie ‘And there there were none’ , also hilarious ‘clue’ and the star-studded cast of ‘murder by death’. Recently just read Jonathan Coe’s novel ‘What a carve up’ in which there was a witty play on these classics…. I grew up with murder and remember playing a now vintage sherlock holmes game with my parents, which I thought was very grown up at the time. i remember being particulary haunted by the dark victorian style illustraions on the board, especially of the park, where in one story a young girl gets kidnapped. probably explains the origin of fear for things lurking in park bushes. fortunately I share this passion for who dunnit with my husband too who was indoctrinated with miss marple by his italian granny when he was little: he remembers it nostalgically as an english winter, his grandfather’s big leather chesterfield armchair and an open fire, all he needed was a thunder storm. so these are a few of my favourite things from pinkmilkvintage‘s new treasury:

vintage 1972 clue game by sydg

doesn’t everyone always want  be miss scarlett?

classic trench coat by amyhartranft

vintage khaki dress by thevintagecloset

pulp fiction novel by stilettogirl
keep quiet…no one can hear you….