"Greetings, Professor Falken..."

You know, there are a lot of great websites out there. Many of my favorites include sites for snack foods and games—interestingly enough, many of your snack food sites will actually have games on them. For instance, the Snackwells site used to have checkers and backgammon. (Yeesh. Real-life backgammon is boring enough, do we really need an online version of it?) The Pringles site also ranked up there for fun and amusing times. Of course, I haven't visited either site in years, so don't bust my chops if the games are no longer there.

Part of the reason I like snack food sites is because I find the history of food (or rather, non-food/junk food) muy interessante. In fact, about 5 years ago, I wanted to be a food historian. I attribute this to endless hours of watching "Unwrapped" on the Food Network and wanting to be paid for doing things I probably have no business doing.

Anyhoo. I was perusing the forums at Television Without Pity tonite to see what everyone thought of Lost and The Amazing Race and Nashville Star (it's called research, people). In the Lost forum for tonite's episode, someone asked how old the game Mousetrap was, believing it was only 18 years old. I know it's older than that because this week's Painful Dredged-Up Memory tells me so.

This Week's Painful Dredged-Up Memory:
Lo, many years ago, mom took me and my brother to the Fountain Hobby Shop where we were each allowed to buy one toy. [Kids, this is the stuff regret is made of, the sort of thing you haven't forgotten even 20+ years later, and the sort of thing you probably shouldn't even be writing about. But I digress.] My brother, being older, chose a Magic 8 Ball. I remember asking if he'd let me play with it too, and whatever he said caused me to come away with a negative impression. The details are sketchy, but it was probably something like:

"Can I play with it, too?"

"No."

Meanwhile, mom kept showing me the display of this game called Mousetrap. It did look awfully cute, with mice, and cheese, and little fake basket nets. And I desperately wanted it. But I desperately wanted to play with the Denied Magic 8 Ball too. I hemmed. I hawed. I hemawed some more. Mom ended up buying two Magic 8 Balls that day, and I've carried around my Mousetrap regret ever since.

So tonite, spurred by a fellow poster at TWoP, I went to the Hasbro website to face my regret on the screen. The site is chock full of gaming goodness. There's history of your favorite games. You can read all about that chap Milton Bradley and his beardless Lincoln art, learn about the Parker Brothers, and discover that Simon really was the game manufacturer's answer to the Disco craze. (I know I was surprised.)

You can also find out that Mousetrap (a Milton Bradley game) hit the streets in 1963.

Oh, and my birthday is in July...    :)

^{Logos used without permis-I mean, courtesy of Hasbro.}