Disclosure

It’s funny how some things just happen by coincidence. One day we’ll discover a game at our local thrift store that we’ve never even heard of, much less played. Keep in mind that we own over 1,300 different board games and have played almost all of them! Then by pure luck we’ll find another copy within a week or so. More often than not it ends up in our basket since we cannot pass on a bargain.

A few weeks back we told you about This Game is Bonkers! As part of our weekly Thrift Treasure series. It was a childhood favorite of my wife and the condition didn’t matter, just seeing her enjoy the flood of memories was worth every penny I paid. And then a couple weeks later, guess what happened…

Nope, we didn’t find another copy at thrift. Something better and completely unexpected occurred! We had been chatting with our friends from Winning Moves at the Origins Game Fair when they had promised to forward copies of some of their new line for us to consider including on SahmReviews. It was now a couple months later when the package arrived, and the first thing we spotted in the box was…yep…a brand new copy of This Game is Bonkers!

What we discovered was that Winning Moves’ new line was reissues of classic titles that you probably had as a child. Now your family could enjoy a classic game night without counting on your luck at the local thrift store! Here’s but a few that have been redone and are available right now with just a click or two.

Candy Land

The race is woven around a storyline about finding King Kandy, the lost king of Candy Land. The board consists of a winding, linear track made of 134 spaces, most red, green, blue, yellow, orange or purple. The remaining pink spaces are named locations such as Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain, or characters such as Queen Frostine and Gramma Nutt.

Players take turns removing the top card from a stack, most of which show one of six colors, and then moving their marker ahead to the next space of that color. Some cards have two marks of a color, in which case the player moves the marker ahead to the second-next space of that color. The deck has one card for each named location, and drawing such a card moves a player directly to that board location. This move can be either forward or backwards!

Chutes and Ladders

Each player starts with a token on the starting square and takes turns rolling a single die to move the token by the number of squares indicated by the die roll. Tokens follow a fixed route marked on the gameboard passing once through every square. If, on completion of a move, a player’s token lands on the lower-numbered end of a “ladder”, the player must move the token up to the ladder’s higher-numbered square. If the player lands on the higher-numbered square of a chute, the token must move down to the chutes’s lower-numbered square.

If a player rolls a 6, the player may, after moving, immediately take another turn; otherwise play passes to the next player in turn. The player who is first to bring their token to the last square of the track is the winner.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Let the Velveteen Rabbit classic story come to life with the Velveteen Rabbit Game from Winning Moves Games! Designed for ages 4 years and older, this game captures the spirit of the beloved story as players’ rabbits venture around the board, collecting cards along the way in a quest to become real. Recommended for 2 to 4 players.

This Game is Bonkers

A quirky and wild game of racing to twelve points. Players roll dice to move their pawn along a linear track and then play “track cards” where they land to add new instructions to each space moving them further forwards or backwards. These cards stay on the track, where everyone else will also follow those same instructions and add their own cards to the chain reaction.

Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm

This quick-paced board game is based on the original Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm live ant habitat. Kids race their ant movers along colorful paths and from chamber to chamber collecting their baby ants. Once all baby ants are collected, the first ant to race back to the Queen Ant’s chamber wins!

Upwords

Upwords has been sending word builders to soaring new heights ever since the game debuted in 1983. Now, the classic 80’s version is back by Winning Moves! The 8×8 size gameboard grid and 64 letter tiles challenge players to think Upside the box! In Upwords letters can be stacked on top of other letters already on the gameboard to create new words. The higher the stack of letters, the more points are scored. Words built in later turns of the game are more valuable than earlier words, increasing the fun and adding a level of strategy unique to Upwords.

And this is just the new additions in 2016! These join other classic titles like Aggravation, Twister, Sorry and many more, all available on Winning Moves USA’s website. What will 2017 bring? Keep an eye on their Twitter and Facebook feeds to be the first to know!

What was/is your favorite classic game?