I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who did and I’ve brought this up at parties before.
I’m the reverse of you actually, as a child it never occurred to me that you could just build the mouse trap without playing the game. So I exclusively played it properly and now I feel a bit stupid.
How would you even play operation without the cards? How is it scored, who wins?
This is how we played it: you take out as many organs as you can until you are buzzed and then it’s the next player’s turn. When you run out of organs, the player with the most wins.
I mean the fun part was just trying to get them out anyway.
Yes we played the Mousetrap board game as kids. It was quite fun to be fair, even just playing with the mechanics solo was fun.
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Yes and yes. I followed the rules as a kid. I played the games with the full rules multiple times even, in defiance of everyone saying that everyone only does so once.
Looking at YouTube playthroughs for nostalgia, it looks like the game rules today have the trap set up to start? When I played, the rules were that you had to build it up slowly over the course of the game, one piece at a time, and only once it was built could it be activated. Yes, I played that way.
There were cards in Operation?
If there were, then they’d long been lost by the time that well used game found its way into my hands.
We did, for both games, although we didn’t play Operation much. It kind of lost its novelty fast, especially with the buzzer the TV commercials conveniently left out.
We played a lot of Mouse Trap, though. Everyone complaining about the trap not working half the time seems to have missed that that was the point. You might land in the trap zone and have one of your siblings get the chance to trap, but it wasn’t a guarantee that you’d be trapped. If it was going to work every time what was the need to even do all the building? At that point it’s just a game with an instant lose square. If the trap worked or failed you needed to reset it for the next attempt, and as part of that reset you could adjust or fix any parts that had failed. Or maybe try to subtly sabotage it again if you’re worried you might be next…
If it was going to work every time what was the need to even do all the building?
To see the little man get flipped into the pool. Duh.
I babysat a brother and sister in the early 90s and we played Mousetrap properly after dinner to kill time until bedtime. Worst babysitter ever.
Then I let them stay up past bedtime while we figured out the most cursed modifications/add-ons. Best babysitter ever.
(In truth, I remember that I had talked with the parents beforehand about “stated bedtime” versus “real bedtime”.)
Very related clip -
Yeah, me and my cousins kept mousetrap working for an entire summer back in the eighties. I liked it a lot, but as others have said, it was beyond janky. It was the idea I liked tbh.
Operation, I had forgotten there were cards at all lol.
Yes to both, thought only a couple of times each…
Man I’m so fuckin glad you asked. We did! I’m not sure if we played the rules properly but I def remember trying.
I think we were missing pieces to this one and were bummed about it though
The Mousetrap game was janky and barely worked. I don’t know if our Operation board still had cards by the time it got to me. I was the third, so… Mousetrap was new when I was a kid, so that came to me new in the box.
Yeah I had Mousetrap, and as others said it barely worked which sucked a lot of the fun out of it. Also don’t remember there being cards in Operation, was it just to determine which body part you’re supposed to remove or did they do something else?
Each player gets a hand of “specialist” cards at the start. Each turn a player draws a “doctor” card and attempts to retrieve the part on the card and if they are successful are awarded the money listed on the card. If they aren’t successful the player who has the specialist card gets to attempt it and wins the (larger) sum of money listed on the specialist card. In some versions of the game, there air no “specialist” cards, only “doctor” cards
I don’t get this complaint. What didn’t work? It always worked 100% for me.
Maybe they improved quality control at some point (or decreased it before my time, idk), but as I recall, the issues were mostly with some of the later contraptions, like the diving board, the diver going into the tub, and the final cage itself.
I’m guessing it’s the reverse- quality control got less over time. The Mousetrap I’ve seen recently looks much crappier than the one we had, which was from the 70s. Which is weird since it’s just plastic.
Just got my daughter operation for Christmas, played with the cards the very first time out.
So we haven’t met, but ive definitely used the cards. Mousetrap I played with a lot, but I think only played by the full rules like maybe 10 times max.
