Saddle-stacking balancing game with spring-loaded plastic mule

Does it not now seem that, in the ‘70s, the marketing people were trying to sell to parents, not to the kids? What else can explain the prevalence of TV ads throughout the decade saturated with cowboy imagery - the likes of Golden Nuggets, Texan Bars, the Milky Bar Kid… and Buckaroo!? The thing is, mums and dads had most likely been children themselves in the post-WWII era and would’ve been brought up on Saturday Matinees, John Wayne flicks and Wild West adventure serials. Somebody, somewhere decided that these were the folk who had the disposable incomes (nobody having yet invented the concept of “pester power”).

Here we have the epitome of that obsession with everything whip-crackin’, rootin’ tootin’ and animal abusin’, pardner. Easily-snapped plastic mouldings (ten-gallon hat, pitchfork, grappling hook, billy can and all that) are gently lowered in turn by players onto a 2D bucking bronco¹. Too much weight causes the hair-trigger to release, sending the aforementioned implements flying across the living room, under the settee, into the dog’s mouth, and so on².

Later variations cashed in on Spielberg’s Jaws (the eponymous game was a neat reversal of the same conceit; remove skulls, anchors, bits of boat, etc, from mouth of shark before it snaps shut) and, we presume, Cleese’s Fawlty Towers (Don’t Tip The Waiter employed a cardboard waiter onto whose carefully-balanced tray players were required to add counters depicting pizza, cakes and sandwiches).

Note the use of the exclamation mark in the title to imply excitement and/or surprise. Therein lies an unspoken suggestion that, at the climax, we might want to cry out the name of the game in a moment of catharsis and delight³.

On a not entirely unrelated note, the phrase “Fuck right off!” works with an exclamation mark, too.

¹The latest commercially available version of Buckaroo! is rendered in 3D as if, for the past four decades, children wouldn’t previously have been able to cope with anything quite so real. Were toy manufacturers forced to up their game once computer-generated games (and films) went all polygon-powered? Alongside yer bog-standard Buckaroo! (with a design clearly riffing on the Eddie Murphy-voiced donkey from Shrek), you can also buy a seasonal Buckaroodolph! (“the mule who doesn’t like Yule”).