Let’s Take a Look at Boardgames with the Best Game Tokens

Let’s talk about tokens in board games—those playing pieces that you move around the board as you play. While some games’ tokens are simple as a colored disk, others really get creative.

In Boom Again—a new pop culture trivia game of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s—game tokens include authentic items from the Baby Boom, such as a dog tag, a skate key, a milk bottle cap and, yes, even a roach clip. It’s a fun and “hands on” nod to the era.

Here, we take a look at some other games that have made more than a token effort on their playing pieces…

The Game of Life

The old jingle started, “You start out with $2,000 and a car…” That car is the playing piece that represents each player. It used to be a station wagon but has since been updated to an SUV.

While a player’s choice on the vehicle itself is limited to its color, the real fun is in stacking it with pink and blue pegs representing family members. As you play, you get a chance to add a spouse, and children and—in the spirit of the Baby Boom—if you’re lucky lots and lots and lots of children.

Open the door to your…Mystery Date

The biggest gimmick of Mystery Date is the plastic door on the gameboard that opens to reveal your “mystery date.” With luck, you’ll get the dreamboat… but you might open the door to “the dud.”

But let’s not forget the little stand-up, cardboard playing pieces—four ladies clad in snappy A-line dresses of bright fuchsia, lime green, purple and blue.

For some girls, they fretted moreover which dress they’d choose as their playing piece than which date would pop up when they opened the door.

You can’t talk about game tokens without mentioning Monopoly

If you played Monopoly as a kid, most likely the game began even before a single roll of the dice because first you had to battle it out to make sure you got the game token you liked best.

The version of the game from the late ‘50s and into the ‘60s that was probably in your home had 10 tokens: a battleship, boot, cannon, horse and rider, iron, racecar, dog, thimble, top hat, and wheelbarrow.

These days? The battleship, racecar and top hat made the cut and are still included. Other pieces—including the iron (did anybody want to be the iron?) have been replaced by a Scottish terrier, penguin, cat, T-Rex and rubber duckie.

Care for a nice game of chess?

Chess has been around for more than 1,000 years, and it’s a game that’s all about its playing pieces. In this two-player game, each opponent has the same 16 pieces to maneuver across a 64-square board—the goal being to shout “checkmate!”

Game pieces consist of pawns, rooks, bishops, knights, a queen, and a king. There are different rules about how each piece can move—and a person can spend a lifetime learning chess strategies.

While there are standard shapes for the chess pieces, specialty pieces range from crystals to sports to movies and more.

Do you have a Clue?

The classic murder mystery game Clue not only features a cast of colorful characters, but also includes potential murder weapons as game tokens. (Who didn’t love crying out, “Aha! Colonel Mustard did it in the library with a lead pipe!”)

Over the years, the choice of weapons changed. Of the original weapons, the candlestick, knife and rope remain. The lead pipe, revolver and wrench, however, have been replaced with a dumbbell, trophy and poison.

The game’s essential challenge, however, remains the same: Who done it?

Playing doctor with Operation

Cavity Sam, the cartoon patient in the game Operation, has a series of goofy ailments—like writer’s cramp (poor guy has a tiny pencil stuck in his hand) and butterflies in the stomach. Did you have a steady enough hand to remove the objects with a tweezers without setting off the buzzer?

The playing pieces in the original game are deliberately silly, and variations over the years get sillier still (like surgically removing Donuts from a Homer Simpson edition).

A game with a Twist

We’re talking, of course, about Twister—and we’re including it in this list because it’s a game in which players ARE the game pieces. Spin the spinner and be ready to find yourself in crazy contortions as you try to do “left hand blue” or “right hand red.”

When Twister hit the toy store shelves in 1966, it wasn’t a hit. In fact, Milton Bradley nearly pulled it—especially after the Sears catalog refused to carry it due to it being too racy.

Then Johnny Carson played it with Eva Gabor—clad in the lowcut gown—on The Tonight Show. The game quicky went from too racy to just the right fit for the swingin’ sixties.

What games do you think have the best game tokens?

 

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