In 1963, Allan Sherman scored a surprise #2 hit with his song "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp)". Set to the tune of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" and telling the story of a boy's miserable time spent at summer camp, it went on to win the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Comedic Song. Apparently, it was popular enough for Milton Bradley to base a game upon it which I found this weekend at an estate sale in Affton.
Play begins by drawing 3 "Icky Animal" cards. These are the animals you need to collect in order to win the game.
Players then take turns drawing cards that have various camp assignments ("GO TO THE CANTEEN to put salt in all the sugar bowls.")
Players are required to navigate a bus around the Camp to the site. If the bus breaks down, you have to stop and are unable to complete the assignment.
The bus "breaks down" when the front radiator flips down. This is caused by a cam on the front axle that when positioned right will bump the front down. In order to avoid this, you need to keep the wheels centered on the bus.
If you make it successfully to your site and one of your Icky Animals is on the site, you collect it and place it at your Bunk House. Icky Animals come with the game and appear to be the same as those you could cast with Milton Bradley's Creepy Crawlers toy.
The game ends when a player to collects all 3 of his Icky Animals and navigates the bus successfully to the "Exit Camp Grenada" sign.
Some shots of the inserts.
- Icky Animals may stick to certain types of skin.
- Ingredients of Icky Animals include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
- Do not taunt Icky Animals.
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Welcome to Gameland! I have the feeling Mom and Dad are going to slam those giant game boxes closed the minute the kids pass through.
More fine games from Milton Bradley:
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Sherman continued spoofing popular songs of the day, but never achieved the same success again. Weird Al Yankovic has acknowledged Sherman was one of his inspirations, paying tribute to him on the cover of his first album.
Allan Sherman passed away from emphysema at the age of 49 in 1973.
i have never heard of this game, but it looks like you scored a mint condition copy. i mean, the bus is shiny, and is still included along with all the animals, who have all their extremities. amazing.
ReplyDeleteIt's new to me too. I was amazed it wasn't missing too many pieces (just 1 of the crawfish and 1 of the spiders) and still had the paperwork. I'm guessing the game didn't get played with much (it's very frustrating trying to navigate that bus without the dang radiator flipping down!) so I imagine just the icky animals were played with leading to the loss of two.
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