Daredevil Penguins

Turns out a number of Americans read this blog so I’m going to translate the next paragraph for them with brackets.

Back in the day (possibly before you were born) I used to hang out with the civil defense (unarmed rescue and support group) mostly for the weekends away. A favorite drinking game involved a cigarette (you could smoke in bars), an empty pint glass, a gogo (elasticated hair band) a carefully opened tayto bag (wrapper from potato chips) and a ha’penny piece (a coin at the time worth 5cent or so)

You placed the wrapper over the mouth of the pint glass secured it at the sides with the gogo to make a little drum then place the ha’penny on top of it in the center. Then everyone agreed a forfeit. Something bad enough that you didn’t want to do it but not bad enough that you’d be ejected from the bar. So pretty wide ranging truth be told. Everyone would sit around the construction and pass the fag (cigarette) around and you’d take it in turns of burn a small hole through the plastic. After a while the plastic would look like a colander and you had to burn the little bridges between the holes. Burn them that was until some poor edjit (unfortunate individual) dropped the penny into the glass. BOOM! all over Lets all point and laugh as you do he forfeit. Yes time did fly by back in the day

Penguin challenge is the same thing with marginally less pints, taytos, gogos and cigarettes. The board is made up of hexagonal cubes that are light and squeeze against each other to stay in place. The ha’penny is replaced by a doomed penguin and the cigarette by a neat little plastic hammer, small enough that if a fight broke out they wouldn’t make suitable weapons.

Ice blocks come in two colours (colors) blue and white. Each turn players spin a little wheel and have to knock out a blue or a white, one of each or skip a turn. This game is pure mental chewing gum. I set it up at the weekend when relatives and their kids visited and it got played and played. It’s simple it’s fun. Kids love it. Adults love it too. There’s hoots and gasps as ice blocks are carefully tapped out. It’s jenga+. It’s great.

I’m sure there’s umpteen (lots) of versions of it out there. I obtained mine from Amazon from China I suspect based on the postage time. At a fiver (5 euro or $20) it’s a must have.

Huzzah!

Victor