I tried to find the origin of the artwork on this vintage board game. But came up short.
I got this version of the game "Bonkers!
" by Parker Brothers from 1978. I remember the game because of the super disco/burst design.Kinda reminds me of that pinball counting cartoon segment on Sesame Street back in the day where they counted to 12. Which if you remember the song, I always love to point out the people that sing it are The Pointer Sisters.
Ok back to the game. Here is some info I learned about it.
Described as a race-style board game designed by Paul J. Gruen who also came up with the game Pay Day
and was considered one of the era's top board game designers. And I'm pretty sure when they say designed it's referring to the concept, not the artwork.That seems to be the only thing I can find that talks about the design. I would have liked to learn more about who did the artwork or how it was conceived.
The game was released three times. Produced first by Parker Brothers
later by Milton Bradley
, and briefly reissued by Winning Moves who seemed to have taken over a lot of classic games.When Milton Bradley revived the game in the early 1990s, the board was made to appear as if the entire track and logo were made out of modeling clay. Weird. The game was also given a fluorescent color scheme, updated fonts, and different styled dice and pawns from the original.
The 2016 Winning Moves reissue returned to the original disco motif.
The object is to be the first player to score 12 points by adding instruction cards to the empty spaces in an attempt to move to several scoring stations. The game's slogan (for all versions) is "It's Never the Same Game Twice!"
And then there's the ear-worm of a commercial that they had back in the day.
Here are the lyrics in case you were wondering:
Parker Brothers "Bonkers!" with its funny twisted track can send you backward to go forward or forward to go back.
The "Bonkers!" board keeps changing with every single play with bonkers cards and bonkers dice it is not the same game twice.
And you go back and forward faster in a "Bonkers!" kind of fun and you're certain that you're losing when suddenly you've won.
"Bonkers!" is fun,
"Bonkers!" is nice,
"Bonkers!" is never the same game twice!"