MOUSE TRAP (1963)
Words Phil Robinson
■ The completed machine.
■ The box artwork showing a Rube Goldberg-style machine.
■ A blueprint of the machine makes up the board.
Perhaps one of the largest amounts of random plastic items to be put in a box and called a game, Mouse Trap is famous for its crazy machine that gets built over the course of a game – and for the disappointment when that machine fails to work.
I have to admit having a little fondness for Mouse Trap. It’s a nostalgic memory of childhood family gaming that saw so many anti-climatic moments due to the over-complicated mechanism employed. That is kind of the point of the game, though: the communal building of a machine so over-the-top in complexity as to be comical. That complex machine of pure plastic is also where the game’s greatest controversy lies.