JAY'S RETRO TOYS & GAMES

Stratego (/strəˈtiːɡoʊ/ strə-TEE-goh) is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual officer and soldier ranks in an army. The pieces have Napoleonic insignia. The objective of the game is to find and capture the opponent's Flag, or to capture so many enemy pieces that the opponent cannot make any further moves. Stratego has simple enough rules for young children to play but a depth of strategy that is also appealing to adults. The game is a slightly modified copy of an early 20th century French game named L'Attaque [fr] ("The Attack"). It has been in production in Europe since World War II and the United States since 1961. There are now two- and four-player versions, versions with 10, 30 or 40 pieces per player, and boards with smaller sizes (number of spaces). There are also variant pieces and different rulesets.

The International Stratego Federation, the game's governing body, sponsors an annual Stratego World Championship.

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Axis & Allies is a series of World War II strategy board games. The first version was initially published in 1981 and a second edition known colloquially as Axis & Allies: Classic was published in 1984. Played on a board depicting a Spring 1942 political map of Earth divided by territories, players take the role of one or more of the five major belligerents of World War II: the Axis powers of Germany and Japan; and the Allied powers of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Turn rotates among these belligerents, who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture enemy territories, with results determined by dice rolls.

More than ten spinoff games have since been produced. Some of these editions are revised versions of the classic game, while others depict a specific theater, campaign or battle of World War II.

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Speak & Read is an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak & Spell".

Speak & Read helped children from ages four to eight develop and improve their reading comprehension and vocabulary.[1] Speak & Read came with a companion booklet for use with the skill activity modes included in the unit. The toy had a vocabulary of 250 words.[2]

The Speak & Math (or Speak & Maths in some countries) was a popular electronic toy created by Texas Instruments in 1980. Speak & Math was one of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Spell and Speak & Read. The Speak & Math was sold worldwide. It was advertised as a tool for helping young children to become better at mathematics. The Speak & Math had a distinct gray with blue and orange color scheme.

PICTURE:  By Joe Haupt from USA - Vintage Texas Instruments Speak & Math Electronic Game, Made In USA, Circa 1980, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41964542

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The Speak & Spell line is a series of electronic hand-held[1][2][3] child computers by Texas Instruments that consisted of a TMC0280 linear predictive coding speech synthesizer, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM game[4] library modules. The first Speak & Spell was introduced at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1978,[5] making it one of the earliest handheld[2] electronic[5] devices with a visual display[6] to use interchangeable game cartridges.[7] The company Basic Fun brought back the classic Speak & Spell in 2019 although with some minor changes.[8]

The Speak & Spell was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.[9]

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Four square is a team sport played among two teams with two players each on a square court divided into four quadrants: A, B, C, and D (usually numbers 3, 4, 2, and 1, respectively, depending on the court.) The square that a player gets to before anyone else immediately becomes their position in the game. The objective of four square is to eliminate players on the opposing team to achieve the highest rank on the court, and this is done by bouncing the ball back and forth between quadrants. A player on one team may bounce the ball to an opponent team’s player’s square, and tries to bounce the ball in a state that the player on the opposing team can not hit it to another square. The winning team will move up in the ranks, and the team that reaches the highest rank, A (usually number 3 on numbered courts depending on the court), first, wins, with all the losing team’s players being eliminated. A player is eliminated when a ball is bounced in a player's quadrant and the player is unable to bounce the ball into another player's quadrant. It is a popular game at elementary schools with little required equipment, almost no setup, and short rounds of play that can be ended at any time.

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Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object, called a lagger,[1][2] into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces and retrieve the object.[3] It is a children's game that can be played with several players or alone. Hopscotch is a physical and cognitive workout.[4][5][6]. Hopscotch is attested c.1200 to 600–500 BCE from the Painted Grey ware era of prehistoric India,[16] it is also listed among the games prohibited by Buddha. It is attested that an ancient form of hopscotch was played by Roman children and soldiers,[17][18][19] but the first recorded references to the game in the English-speaking world date to the late seventeenth century, usually under the name "scotch-hop" or "scotch-hopper(s)".[20] A manuscript Book of Games compiled between 1635 and 1672 by Francis Willughby refers to 'Scotch Hopper‥. They play with a piece of tile or a little flat piece of lead, upon a boarded floor, or any area divided into oblong figures like boards'.[21] In Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677, the game is referred to as "Scotch-hoppers". The entry states, "The time when schoolboys should play at Scotch-hoppers." The 1707 edition of Poor Robin's Almanack includes the following phrase… "Lawyers and Physicians have little to do this month, so they may (if they will) play at Scotch-hoppers."[22] In 1828, Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language also referred to the game as 'Scotch-hopper' ... 'a play in which boys hop over scotches and lines in the ground.'[23]

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A Slinky is a precompressed[clarification needed] helical spring toy invented by Richard James in the early 1940s. It can perform a number of tricks, including travelling down a flight of steps end-over-end as it stretches and re-forms itself with the aid of gravity and its own momentum, or appear to levitate for a period of time after it has been dropped. These interesting characteristics have contributed to its success as a toy in its home country of the United States, resulting in many popular toys with slinky components in a wide range of countries.

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A yo-yo (also spelled yoyo) is a toy consisting of an axle connected to two disks, and a string looped around the axle, similar to a spool. It is an ancient toy with proof of existence since 500 BCE. The yo-yo was also called a bandalore in the 17th century.

It is played by holding the free end of the string known as the handle (by inserting one finger—usually the middle or ring finger—into a slip knot), allowing gravity (or the force of a throw and gravity) to spin the yo-yo and unwind the string (similar to how a pullstring works). The player then allows the yo-yo to wind itself back to the player's hand, exploiting its spin (and the associated rotational energy). This is often called "yo-yoing" or "playing yo-yo".

In the simplest play, the string is intended to be wound on the spool by hand; the yo-yo is thrown downward, hits the end of the string then winds up the string toward the hand, and finally the yo-yo is grabbed, ready to be thrown again. One of the most basic tricks is called the sleeper, where the yo-yo spins at the end of the string for a noticeable amount of time before returning to the hand.

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Backgammon is the most widespread member of the large family of tables games, a type of board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. This family of games dates back nearly 5,000 years to Mesopotamia and Persia, whereas the earliest record of backgammon itself dates to the 17th century England; being descended from the 16th-century game of Irish.[2][3]

Backgammon is a two-player game in which each player has fifteen pieces, known traditionally as 'men' (short for 'tablemen') but often known as 'checkers' in the US. These pieces move along twenty-four 'points' according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to move the fifteen pieces around the board and be first to bear off, i.e. remove them from the board.

Backgammon involves a combination of strategy and luck (from rolling dice). While the dice may determine the outcome of a single game, the better player will accumulate the better record over a series of many games. With each roll of the dice, players must choose from numerous options for moving their pieces and anticipate possible counter-moves by the opponent. The optional use of a doubling cube allows players to raise the stakes during the game.

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Risk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest[1] for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve alliances during the course of the game. The goal of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and, in doing so, eliminate the other players.[2] The game can be lengthy, requiring several hours to multiple days to finish. European versions are structured so that each player has a limited "secret mission" objective that shortens the game.

Risk was invented in 1957 by Albert Lamorisse, a French filmmaker, and it became one of the most popular board games in history, inspiring other popular games such as Axis & Allies and Settlers of Catan. The simple rules but complex interactions make it appealing to adults as well as children and families. It is still in production by Hasbro with numerous editions and variants with popular media themes and different rules including PC software versions, video games, and mobile apps.

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