DS/Barnabas Collins Game

[Mysterious Benefactor]

If you come knocking at my door, I will not let you in.

Don't worry - the certain group of someones knows who they are. 

[CyrusL]

   I have both games. I'm pretty sure the Barnabas Collins game was issued at least for a while with an upper and lower teeth plastic fangs. They were a bright white plastic, not ivory or that pale greenish yellow glow-in-the dark like Aurora models. I remember being disappointed and slightly heartbroken    when my mom bought one for my cousin's birthday which we played at the party at my grandmother's, then promised to buy me one but never did. By the way, did anyone at Milton Bradley ever consider it was a liitle less than sanitary for kids to play a game where you passed around something that literally went from mouth to mouth? Were there instructions to "please wash the fangs after each use?"
      Michael

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I have both games. I'm pretty sure the Barnabas Collins game was issued at least for a while with an upper and lower teeth plastic fangs.

Which type came with your game?

I remember being disappointed and slightly heartbroken    when my mom bought one for my cousin's birthday which we played at the party at my grandmother's, then promised to buy me one but never did.

But you showed her when you were finally able to buy your own. 

By the way, did anyone at Milton Bradley ever consider it was a liitle less than sanitary for kids to play a game where you passed around something that literally went from mouth to mouth? Were there instructions to "please wash the fangs after each use?"

Check out the rules. 

BTW, when you'd played the game, which version did you like best?

[Raineypark]

I'm amazed I have no recollection of this game at all.

Did it involve getting dressed up in costumes?

(Well....knowing this crowd, you probably all improvised costumes whether the game called for it or not..... )

[Gerard]

I never had the game as a child myself.  I wanted it, but my mother refused to get it for me.  I did get the comic books (and eventually the Marilyn Ross novels) with my owned saved pennies, but the game was out of my price range.  It probably cost a whole whopping five dollars .  Well, I guess that was a lotta money back then.  I remember, a couple years earlier, that I wanted the Lost-In-Space ray-gun toy set.  It came with two "guns" - a pistol and a rifle, and its "laser beams" were these whirly things that you wound onto the guns and then went spinning in the air when you fired them.  I beg, pleased, cajoled, cried and otherwise tormented my parents into getting it for me.  At the store, it cost a whopping $5.95.  My dad sighed and said:  "If we get this for you, this is the last thing you get until Christmas."  The toy gun set lasted for about a month until I broke the spring-work inside the doohickey which shot off the whirly "laser beams" by winding it too tight.  So maybe it's good I didn't get the Dark Shadows/Barnabas Collins Milton Bradley game back then.  I woulda made shambles of it in record time.

Gerard

[Philippe Cordier]

I never had the game as a child myself.  I wanted it, but my mother refused to get it for me.  I did get the comic books (and eventually the Marilyn Ross novels) with my owned saved pennies, but the game was out of my price range.  It probably cost a whole whopping five dollars .  Well, I guess that was a lotta money back then.

Gerard, your story gave me a much appreciated chuckle; it brings back similar childhood memories (though I don't recall much about the Barnabas Collins game).

I've never been a parent, but I wonder why so many parents (at least in those days) wouldn't indulge their child when something was so very important to the child.  Though I think parents today frequently go to the other extreme.

We had it tough back then.

[Raineypark]

I've never been a parent, but I wonder why so many parents (at least in those days) wouldn't indulge their child when something was so very important to the child.  Though I think parents today frequently go to the other extreme. We had it tough back then.

Parents back then were themselves survivors of the Great Depression.  They never trusted that things wouldn't go back to being that bad at some point.  It was more important to save what they could, than to indulge what (to them) was a  childish whim.

We, on the other hand, don't want our little darlings to suffer the "deprivation" of not getting that toy/game they want so badly today......and can't be bothered with tomorrow. 

[Gerard]

Did we ever, Vlad!  Those were the days of because-I-said-so.  Ninety percent of what I wanted I never got.  Even that one time of the year when I took it to a higher authority - Santa Claus - I still got screwed.  I remember one Christmas when I really pouted because the jolly old elf didn't come through with my list of gimmees.  My mom responded with:  "Do you think Baby Jesus would've asked for that stuff?"  For some reason, that quieted me down.  I don't know why, but there's no going up against a mother's logic.

I may not have gotten all the Dark Shadows goodies that lined the shelves of toy stores, but I did win the major battle of being able to watch the show, and I was up against a determined mother who did not want me watching that "spooky crap", plus it was on opposite Art Linkletter.  After Lawrence Welk, that man held the hearts of every housewife-mother in the heartland.  I'm still amazed to this day that I won that one.

Gerard

[Gothick]

Gerard, I'm cackling maniacally over your Mom's comment about Baby Jesus!  (hahaha guess you know where *I'm* going!)  My Mom also banned me from watching DS.  Watching it secretly was the first major flouting of her authority in my young life--one of the few times I actually needed to disobey because I was such a Class A nerd as a youngster.

It's funny and poignant to think of how much money five dollars was back then.  I was just listening to a tape recording of Cass Elliott contrasting the Monterey Pop Festival with the festivals of the early Seventies and saying how crass and commercial things had gotten to the point where "the tickets cost a huge amount of money--fifteen dollars!  That's sooo much money!"  and she was really being sincere.

Sheesh--I'm so old I can remember Saturday matinees at the local movie theatre that cost less than a dollar.  *sigh*

G.

[Gerard]

Speaking of that, Gothic, I remember waiting in line one October in 1970 to see a certain matinee showing of a particular movie.  I think we can all figure out which movie it was.  And along with that feature, there was a western first, with cartoons sandwiched in-between (and, of course, the previews).  I also got popcorn and a candy bar, and I made sure, upon returning home that Saturday afternoon, to give my mom the change left over from the dollar she had given me.  I don't know what shocks me more this day - seeing House of Dark Shadows, along with a first feature and getting popcorn and a candy bar all for under a dollar, or my mom giving me the dollar to go and see the big-screen version of that "spooky crap."

Gerard