Average board game saved by genius contraption

Probably the original “board game plus”, MB Games’ epochal Mousetrap led the charge to leaven the drab, 2D world of the dice ‘n’ counters board game with a plasticky, vertical dimension - the well-loved trap of the title.

The inspiration for the device came - we’re pretty sure - from the old Chuck Jones Warner Brothers cartoons, in particular a recurring motif where a character (usually Sylvester) rigs up a ridiculously complicated mousetrap consisting of ropes, pulleys, safes, fridges, irons, electric fans blowing model boats, roller skates with pool cues tied to them, upended tubs of water, etc. etc. all setting one another off in a long line. Which made great viewing, but Jones and co. were always careful to leave out the doubtless long, tedious hours spent hammering, sawing and constructing the trap in the first place.

MB attempted, bravely, to incorporate this into the game itself, with pieces (the diver, the barrel, the drawbridge, the boot, the marble, et al) going up one by one as mousey counters moved round the board. As with the likes of Ker-Plunk and Buckaroo! this turned the actual game itself into one protracted, suspense-filled build up to the “money shot” when the trap went off, which it did with a perhaps surprising, if not massive, success-to-failure rate, at least until one of the crucial bits went missing down the sofa. In which case (due to the shameful absence of a Spare Drawbridge Hotline) you were sunk.

Our in-no-way-scientific reckoning puts the ratio of completed games of Mousetrap to occasions when you just built the thing and set it off, counters be damned, at about 1:8 (see also Cascade).