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Games In Pens!

Strange, stupid little article for you today, and it's all about Games In Pens. What are Games In Pens? Classic board games and other much-loved toys, miniaturized and stuck on pens! I picked up eight different this weekend, from Pop-O-Matic Trouble to the Play-Doh Fun Factory. Sure, it's not the feature the world's been waiting for, but if I'm going to spend fifty bucks on novelty pens, I damn well better get an article out of them.

Posted by Matt on 08/07/2005. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 156 comments

I don’t know what it is about these kinds of stores, but they depress the hell out of me. It’s not that I dislike what they’re selling — it’s just a feeling I get whenever at one of ‘em. Before I die, I must figure out why.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 08/07/2005 8:47 PM

Oh.Your.God. A Lite Brite pen? I loved lite brite! I was one of those kids who was easily distracted by lights and such.

And don’t get me started on the NERF pen. I made my own a few years ago, except I lacked the necessary foam to make it NERFy, so metal it was. Like that weird looking kid in A Christmas Story, I nearly shot my damn eye out.

Chestnuts roasted by Road Block @ 08/07/2005 8:50 PM

well, of course it was Michaels… pinkshiro, how could you not understand the Barrel of Monkeys game? why would you need to to buy it, it’s freakin’ monkeys!
speaking of which, I have it, and could do a quick review (if anyone actually wanted me to)

Chestnuts roasted by MrMunkeepants @ 08/07/2005 9:15 PM

Hey Matt, I was just wondering if some of the prizes awarded to these awesome pens were leftovers from the Animalia days. No Baleen Whale prizes??

Chestnuts roasted by WonKa @ 08/07/2005 9:18 PM

one step worse than craft stores->fabric stores
I remember being little getting drug along while my mom looked at patterns for HOURS!

Chestnuts roasted by kb @ 08/07/2005 9:25 PM

I’m not a HUGE fan of Michaels’, but I go in there anyway because my mother and sister, both of them artists, ARE, and it’s a good place to birthday/Christmas shop for them. Come to think of it, the novelty pens might make nice birthday presents for my brother. He’s got the real Nerf gun somewhere and beats the pants off of me on Connect Four and Trouble; he’d probably think the pens were awesome.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 08/07/2005 9:38 PM

Ah, fabric stores!!! Last time I was in one, I was getting fabric for a letter making day for Psi Chi. It ended up not being thick enough to cut patterns out of, so I got a stylish flourescent pink shawl out of the deal. I wore it for about a solid hour. Our local working-all-night-every-night professor had to ask me the next morning if he had been dreaming it. :P

Chestnuts roasted by Knegative @ 08/07/2005 10:09 PM

Not to be at all picky, because I know your busy, but what happend to the Cereal Prize update? Will we see it any time soon?

Chestnuts roasted by GozerJr @ 08/07/2005 11:11 PM

I agree, crafts stores smell weird…I remember the pencil machine at my school back in 5th grade dispensed pencils sporting the logos of various sports teams. Kids went nuts over these things and spent alot of their parents’ money on these things. At 50 cents a pop that isn’t cheap, especially WAY back in ’92 (kidding). Needless to say on the days i actually NEEDED a pencil the damn machine was sold out. I wish they would’ve sold pencils with cartoon or video game characters. I would be the one raiding the machine then……

Chestnuts roasted by phunqsauce @ 08/07/2005 11:20 PM

I received an Operation pen last year.

What I found amusing about it was that it completely did away with the actual ‘game’ part of Operation, "Where you’re the doctor– collecting all your PAY!!!", and just went straight to the surgery.

What I hated about it was that it doesn’t buzz, and some of the tethered-and-thus-no-longer-fully-removable pieces were glued in by plastic flash, making them even less removable.

I don’t write a whole lot with it. Pilot V5s are better.

Chestnuts roasted by G'Tron @ 08/07/2005 11:24 PM

I can’t beleive I have to report here that Peter Jennings died earlier tonight at 67, because of his cancer.

This is really sad.

Chestnuts roasted by Invader Norbert @ 08/08/2005 12:05 PM

R.I.P. Peter Jennings. I liked your voice. :(

Chestnuts roasted by kidneyboy @ 08/08/2005 1:13 AM

Those pens are very cool. I didn’t like Pop-O-Matic Trouble that much, but would press that dice bubble for hours of simplistic fun. And, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d lose those Connect Four pieces within the first five minutes of opening the package. I can’t wait until they put out a pen with a…baseball stadium attached to it.

I just heard about Peter Jennings’ death. That’s terrible. I’m sure he had a really interesting life, though.

Chestnuts roasted by Dr. Acula @ 08/08/2005 1:15 AM

God everyone dies of cancer. I will probably die of cancer one day.

I go into Michael’s sometimes. Their silk flowers don’t look quite as fake as some others and grandmothers/mothers/boyfriend’s mothers etc actually like personally made silk flower arrangements as Christmas gifts. At least the ones I know do.

Kneg is a Greek? I can’t believe that I’m not the only one.

Chestnuts roasted by Gabbylicious @ 08/08/2005 1:52 AM

I was already beaten to the Monopoly game pen, but I did find this:

http://www.playthingspast.com/st-12027.html

which I don’t really understand…I guess it’s a very strained effort to get a brand name on the standard pinball idea.

I must have a Lite Brite pen.

Chestnuts roasted by Mara @ 08/08/2005 1:58 AM

Yeah, cancer…

I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker ;)

Chestnuts roasted by kidneyboy @ 08/08/2005 2:09 AM

You take the good you take the bad..you take them both and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life, theres a time you gotta grow, and show, you know the facts of life the facts of lfie…

Chestnuts roasted by Eek @ 08/08/2005 2:27 AM

Well it’s an honor society/service organization. It’s not a frat/sorority. So while technically I guess I am a Greek, I’m really more of a Geek.

Kneg is fine, but you can use K- if you’d like. It’s what goes on the stickers, t-shirts, and coffee mugs folks :P

Chestnuts roasted by Knegative @ 08/08/2005 2:28 AM

I think we’re really all geeks. I mean, did you read the spoiler thread? It was like nerd paradise. And I don’t think anyone here can say they didn’t get wicked excited when they could name the movie/show/etc that any of the spoilers were from.

Chestnuts roasted by Gabbylicious @ 08/08/2005 2:35 AM

One of the things I hope to see before I die is a fat black woman wagging her finger at her son and saying, "YO’ IN BIIIG TROUBLE WITH A POP-O-MATIC BUBBLE!!" It’d be hilarious.

…Why does Matt’s local paper print daily funnies in color? That’s not the Sunday edition; all the ‘toons are single-row. Was that done by someone at his NY paper or do newspapers actually have that option now? And if so, why don’t more of them go for it? I doubt I’ll get an answer….not only does Matt probably not know, he probably doesn’t care about something like this either.

Chestnuts roasted by Mars @ 08/08/2005 2:43 AM

Oh yeah. I better toot my own horn.

My cartoons are back after a hiatus of three months. During that time I worked on and off on several, enjoying the luxury of polishing the writing instead of rushing against deadline. Now the first one has hit and I don’t want to spoil any of it here, except to say….you should love it. Go see.

And speaking of websites…Pop Arena guy, PUT SOMETHING NEW ON YOURS ALREADY.

Chestnuts roasted by Mars @ 08/08/2005 2:45 AM

I don’t have any of those game pens, but I got this cute Peeps pen during easter. I only had enough money for one so I got the bunny shape instead of the chick shape.

Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 08/08/2005 2:46 AM

And some people call me Mauuuuurice (Wahh waaho!)

I have one of those Etch-a-Sketch pens. I happen to like craft stores, but that’s probably because I’m a polymer clay addict, apparently just like Matt’s girlfriend. I’m currently trying to find the two colors of clay that I need complete this very large dragon that I’m working on.

What I’d like is a pen with just PPlay-Doh in it. It wouldn’t even need the tools, just the Play-Doh.

Chestnuts roasted by Freezair @ 08/08/2005 2:48 AM

Gabby, I must agree. The Spoiler was one of my fav blogs so far. It was up there with the Hobbies one and the Top 5 DVDs. If Matt would do Top 5 Albums or Artists, I could die a happy boy.

Hey, IHAQ hasn’t been around for a while and the new Our Lady Peace is on right now :)

Chestnuts roasted by Knegative @ 08/08/2005 3:04 AM

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 7th, 2005 at 3:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.