"Remove Funnybone..."

"Ha, Ha, Ha"
Or something like that. I think that's how the old Operation TV Commercial went.

I needed some reference for work, so the other day I stopped in at Toys 'R' Us. I hadn't been at TRU in quite some time. Back when I was buying tons of "Simpsacrap" I used to go there regularly, but since I've just about ran out of space in my Toy Room I only get there once every few weeks.

Besides checking out all the stuff at the Action Figure aisles (some cool Justice League Unlimited figures and a talking Thing doll from the Fantastic Four movie) when I got to the board game section, I noticed a sorry trend. (and I don't mean the game Sorry)

There's been a lot written about the sorry state of American films these days. Besides all the usual sequels we've been flooded with horrible TV Show adaptations and even more horrible, unnecessary remakes of classic movies. Well, something similar has been happening at your local Toy Store.

Nearly every board game I saw were remakes (or more apt, reformatted) of classic games.
For years one version of Monoply
was enough. Now we have Star Wars Monoply, Lord of the Rings Monoply, Marvel Comics Monoply, etc... There must have been at least 10 different versions of that one game alone!

Monoply wasn't the only board game to be bastardized. There were a plethora of Clue versions, The Game of Life versions and a TON of Trivial Pursuit games!!!! At least three full shelves filled with a multitude of versions of the same exact game!

Whatever happened to, you know, NEW ORIGINAL STUFF!!!!!

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I will mention that I did see a remake of a game that actually made some weird kind of sense. They've remade Operation, the old "shocking" body parts removal game by Simpsonizing it.



And damn it if it doesn't work! The image of Homer in his briefs seems like it was made for that game.

OK, so I'm being a bit hypocritical here. After getting ticked off at the lack of originality by the game makers I'm actually heralding a non original game. It still ticks me off that we've come to this, milking whatever life is left from existing ideas rather than come up with new ones, but you know if I was still working at Hasbro I think pushing a new version of the popular marble eating game could be kind of cool.

I could see it now, "Hungry, Hungry Homers"!