The Addams Family Games (1964)

 In 1964, Ideal (who else remembers them?) gave us the first Addams Family board game. Unlike most mass market games of its time, it's not your average roll and move.

 

Disclaimer: None of the photos in this post are mine. I'm not lucky enough to own a copy of the game! They were sourced from around the internet including BoardgameGeek.com and Dan Rosenberg from the BGG Facebook group.

 

 The box art is wonderful. You've got the whole family against a nice rendition of the house, bats flying, and for some reason a skeleton watching TV. Seeing this made me start thinking how fun it might be to have had a live action series with animated elements, a la Roger Rabbit, to allow them to do some crazier things.

 

 The board itself it something that could be framed and hung on a wall. 

 

From the inside box lid:

The moon, half hidden behind dark gray clouds, casts weird shadows around the Addams Family Mansion. It is a perfect night for the Addams Family to go on their annual midnight picnic at the nearby cemetery. The only trouble is that the family is scattered all over the house. You must have them meet in front of the house so that they can all leave together. 

 

 

There should be four tiles for each family member. It's not easy finding a good photo of the complete components for a 61 year old game!

 

Each player takes a set of colored chips (referred to as a "man" in the rules) and a tile of each family member. They place one man on the multi-color start space of each family member. Before a player spins, each person selects three of their seven family member tiles in an attempt to predict who will come up on the spinner.

 

If the spinner lands on a family member that you selected, you get to move them the number of indicated spaces. If you were the one that spun, you can either move your man double the amount on the spinner or move an opponent's man backward that number of spaces. If you land on a space with Thing on it, you draw a Thing card and follow the instructions which include things like go back to start or take another turn.

 

Turns continue until one person gets four family members to the house and wins.

 

Also in 1964, another favorite toy manufacturer, Milton Bradley, released The Addams Family Card Game.

  

 

The game is similar to War. The deck is dealt out to all players and each turn they flip a card and compare them to see who wins. 

 

 It differs from War in that these are the only types of cards in the deck. The cards essentially play Rock-Paper-Scissors with each card having one that it wins against, except for Fester/Lurch who are wild and can take all cards. If there's a tie, they continue flipping cards until only one person flips a card matching their original card.

 

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