Nu Top Trumps.

Games Like many people of a certain age, I was kept "busy" on train and car rides by I Spy books and more often Top Trumps. It's the simplest of educational games, a series of cards on a particular subject with various trivia underneath and cards won when one number is higher than another. The first person to get all of the cards wins. My clearest memory is of the dinosaurs set, hoping against hope to have the T-Rex card which had the capacity to slay everything in its wake. My young imagination filled with images of the actual dinosaurs squaring off against each other in the stop motion animated glory of a Ray Harryhausen movie. Eventually, I had the cards memorised, not that I can recall any of the facts now. They've been replaced with other useful things like the story order of Doctor Who seasons and when various Shakespeare plays were written.

Glancing through the selection of titles available, I'm pleased to see the dinosaurs are still there, albeit with an updated design. But in keeping with the times, Top Trumps have moved on to more pop culture topics and so its with this curiosity I agreed to their PR sending me a bunch of sets to have a look at and write about on here along with a FRIENDS quiz. Since I'm just embarking on a first rewatch of the sitcom in a few years, I'll save that until I'm in a position to have any chance of answering the, at a glance, incredibly nerdy questions.  Rather like BBC's Mastermind when it often covers pop culture, it also keeps its questions within the fiction of the show.  So nothing asking who directed the first episode, who played Charlie Wheeler, Marcel the Monkey's real name or which other network series took part in "Blackout Night". *

The cards themselves have been updated.  Back in the day, these were quite schematic affairs with an image on top and a small yellow table underneath listing attributes.  Now each is more uniquely designed with a photo of the subject, a small fact file (character biog, episode synopsis) and the attributes in much bolder text inspired by the given IP.  The FRIENDS set in particular feels like a callback to the era of the series in its text and iconography, although the use of something approximating Comic Sans is a bold choice.  It's here that I notice that the first episode, which in pretty much every home release is called simply "The Pilot" has is called the Netflix title "The One Where Monica Gets A Roommate".  I wonder when this was adopted at the prefered title?  Do you know?

Having not seen Top Trumps in all these years, it's disorientating to now find a game which, at least in its pop culture version, is generally numerically based on opinion with rather random categories.  The Friends set eskews characters in favour of episodes.  So instead of pitting Janice against Mr Heckles, it's The One Where No One's Ready fighting The One With The Lottery.  That means the editor of these numbers can boldly give The One After The Superbowl, Part 2 a "Top Trumps Rating" of 92 ahead of The One Where Rachel Finds Out on at 87, which I'm not sure anyone would agree with.  The Only Fools and Horses set mixes characters, things and places which presents the spectacle of an alpine ski suit as being more intelligent than Rodney and radical hair-dryers having better family values than Cassandra.  Why is one thing higher than another?

The closest to old school is the Star Trek set, with just characters but even then there are problems for those of us who have an interest in the franchise. One of the attributes is "year of birth" which is a bit ageist since it automatically puts older officers at a disadvantage. Plus the choice of characters is incredibly curious. All of the various Captains are here but crew members omitted include Beverley Crusher (even though Wesley is here for goodness sake), Bashir, Jazdia Dax (it's Ezri), Harry Kim, Tom Paris, Tuvok, Kes, B'Elanna Torres and everyone on the NX-01 apart from Archer, Tucker and T'Pol.  Chakotay has a threat to the universe score of 22 which has to be someone in the office taking a satirical swipe at Janeway's executive officer.  And what does the To Boldy Go score refer to and why does Sisko merit a 40 but Kirk a 20?  Overall, such things as skill, stamina and intellect would have made much more sense, especially since Cunning is included, something which Data scores curiously low on.

So how does it play?  I've just got back from testing the Only Fools and Horses set and either because of the age of the participants, mid-40s and mid-70s, we didn't complete a game.  As the contest went on, we pretty much coalesced around reading out the "laughs" score only, I think partly because it was the only moderately tangible number on the card.  As I suspected, because it was impossible to conceptually gauge how a number applied to the subject, it then made it less of a game of skill than simply reading out random numbers and seeing who missed out in each turn which becomes incredibly boring in the short and long term.  In what universe does Del Boy have greater style than Marlene?

Am I just having a sense of humour of bypass about a kids game.  Possibly.  Probably.  But I'd argue that there's little point in doing Top Trumps if the game mechanics don't work and I wonder if any of these sets have been playtested in house for their longevity and the extent to which the scores have been mulled over.  A short explanation included within each set might have helped.  There's also the notion of having a Top Trumps game for FRIENDS or Only Fools.  Who exactly are these meant for?  Children will have little to know interest in these properties, both broadcast before they were born and the game is too simplistic for adults outside of family time.  Fortunately the more educational options are still available.  "Height  3.3 metres ..."

* ǝldoǝԀ ǝɥʇ ɟo uɐɯpɐW puɐ 'plǝɟuᴉǝS 'spuǝᴉɹℲ 'no⅄ ʇnoq∀ pɐW 'ǝᴉʇɐʞ 'ɹǝlʎ┴ ɐɥsᴉ∀ 'sʍoɹɹnq sǝɯɐſ