Where it all went wrong

[davidn]

I had a sudden flashback caused by something that Whitney mentioned last night, to a board game that I think my parents might still have in the basement called "Go Fetch It". Mention of it on the Internet seems to be extremely scarce, outside of people posting to ask if anyone else has heard of it, and indeed, Whitney refused to believe that it was real until I found that page.

The game was based around, er, pretending to be dogs. It was one of those things that seemed like a great idea in the early 90s, where the game wasn't controlled by the roll of a dice but by an audio cassette which gave "orders" to the players, with the game being made different by which of the canine characters happened to start on which of the four paths on the board. These orders could be to move forward or backward depending on what colour or number square you were on, to hide one of the provided plastic bones somewhere around the house to annoy your parents, try to fetch one of the previously hidden bones (therefore missing out on all further advantageous/disadvantageous orders until you returned), or just bark a bit.

I know what half my active watch list is thinking at the moment, and you're right - this couldn't exactly have helped.

Comments

[kibet.livejournal.com]

When you said it, I also had a flash of memory, but I think I was thinking of a different games as the one I was thinking of was, I am sure we had plastic dog ears to put on. Or rather those elastic strips that cut into your head with bits of plastic that resembled bacon for the ears. The same colour of blue bone was in my head though before I saw the picture although can't remember playing on a board and was more a hide and seek involving bones.

[pami-zee.livejournal.com]

I loved that game SO much!!!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

Or, from another perspective, perhaps it did help.

[kjorteo]

You had this game and yet you became a rabbit.

I had my disproportionately large collection of reptile-themed furry bait and turned into a dog.

Somewhere out there is a furry who is very confused about how all those rabbit characters from his youth turned him into a lizard.

[davidn]

As it happens, the second Google result I found for this was a question on the ever-comical Yahoo Answers that described what might have been the same thing... something that sounds very similar without the audio bit. I wonder if it was something else produced by the same people.

[davidn]

I know, I remember that it was exactly your kind of thing at that age :) I think we might have got it from Katy at first... or maybe we just played it a lot with her.

How come you still got to turn out normal, then?

[davidn]

Always the positive thinker :)

[davidn]

Yes, and when we find him... the Earth will explode.

That is a very good point - I'm trying to recall any lapine characters that I grew up with (thank you, Wikipedia) - a fair amount of my childhood entertainment was from the early 1900s, and I remember being read Little Grey Rabbit, which my mum still dearly loves. Then there was Bugs Bunny, and Jazz Jackrabbit (whose game I knew I liked a disproportionate amount, at that stage when I didn't know why).

Of course, the greatest blame for this can be put squarely on the Cadbury Caramel rabbit, who was voiced by... how can I put this best... clearly an extremely good voice actress. When you show that to children, you're going to mess them up later on in life.

Speaking of which, I am eternally mystified at how all of my siblings escaped normal, despite us sharing pretty much exactly the same entertainment when growing up. All the resultant brain miswiring was mine alone.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

This game: yes please!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Maybe I had the poor man's version of it for those that could not afford the fancy technology that was tape decks.

Actually thinking back, I don't think we owned it so we must have borrowed it from the library or my mother's work. So most likely it was educational. I do know that we had the old couch so would put the date back anywhere around 1984-1989.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, I didn't know the Cadbury's Caramel bunny was voiced by the Spanish Infanta from Blackadder! Wow. :P

D.F.

[davidn]

And Lady Whiteadder, of all people - this is a very... broad range of characters and voices!

[quadralien.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the Sonic the Hedgehog-playing should have given me the worst chance of being affected by all this, but if I may use a related metaphor, the process seems to have fallen foul of the Roboticiser somewhere along the way. :P

[davidn]

I'm honestly not sure how to interpret this, or if I want to. I should, of course, make it clear that I was using the word "normal" in the most relative sense possible.

Having said that, you also didn't become one of those people who argue on the Internet about whether the panning register in Emerald Hill is set at #002C or #002A, so I'm not sure what to make of it.