The Game of Cricket

If there appears to be a bias towards cricket in these posts, it is purely accidental. This game was a new one to me when I found it, and has a very attractive cover design, so it is worth describing.

The game is played on a cardboard pitch with a set of stumps illustrated at about a quarter of the way in from each end. There are red numbered spots (1-6) in front of the stumps, and these have the numbers 1-6 printed on them, with lines linking each of those numbers to a score or penalty. The bowling side throws a die to determine which of the red spots is used by the bowler, and the bowler then throws the die to discover the effect, which is based on the scores and ways of getting out in the real game. The instructions are pasted inside the lid and unusually contain what appears to be an error, describing the right hand end of the pitch when the left was intended, but it is a minor problem.

The box is printed by chromolithography, but not the board.

I would suggest that the game dates from the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Croquet Race

The New Game of Croquet Race

is a completely new one on me. The pieces are missing from this example, but are unlikely to have been anything more than a die and counters. The game could have been produced by any of a number of makers, including companies such as Spears, but there is a strong possibility that it was made by Roberts Brothers. The board and cover label are chromolithographs, with the board decorated with characters in clothing of a noticeably earlier date than those on the lid, suggesting that the game may have been poroduced initially in the early years of the 20th century, but that this example was produced in the period of or after World War I.

The rules are pasted inside the lid in this example, so it is possible to understand the game, which is simple but clever and as likely to cause dissent amongst the players as the real game of croquet. Players have to follow a track, passing through hoops (for which they gain an extra throw of the die) in order to hit two pegs (halfway and at the end) with exact throws. If they land on a space occupied by an opponent a new throw is used to send that player BACK and the active player FORWARD, so the players are encouraged to use this technique to delay their opponents.

Auctioneer

The Game of Auctioneer.

This is one of those Roberts games that had a fairly long production run. It also demonstrates more readily than many the dangers of making assumptions about dating.
The game uses a series of cards bearing images of items with legs; furniture, animals, fowl, etc. The idea is to match pairs of cards, as in table and chair. This is done either by the unlikely chance that all the cards in one's hands are pairs, or else by buying cards 'at auction' to complete a pair. The snag is that whichever player is auctioneer only declares the number of legs on the card being auctioned, so that bidders are buying sight unseen.
The rules claim that a skilled and amusing auctioneer can cause much fun.
When an item is purchased, the winning bidder becomes the next auctioneer. The balance of the game is in protecting one's stock of cash whilst trying to make the correct matches to be able to lay down on the table a matched pair. The game ends when one of the players runs out of cards in hand, either through pairing them or selling them. The winner, however, is the one with the highest total value of cash in hand and paired cards; singles are not counted.
So far, so good.
The date is, however, unlikely to be that claimed by owners or sellers, although it may be. The usual means by which people date this game is the coins, which are most commonly well-made cardboard reproductions of coins of George V, dated 1916. This leads to claims that the game dates to 1916.
In some instances this is doubtless true, but far more frequently it will be wrong. The game has at least three designs of label, and was in production from the first decade of the 20th century to World War II. The potential for examples to remain on the shelves of shops beyond this must not be overlooked. As in archaeology, a firm date on something only indicates that it is likely to be on or after that date (assuming that the date was not a future one, which can usually be discounted) and not that it is precisely the right date.
So if you have believed that a game may be dated on the basis of the component parts you may be wrong, or if you think that a design for the lid or the game elements points to a specific date, you may be wrong there, too.

Many games manufactured by Roberts Brothers (and indeed by other makers) were loosely based on hunting or other forms of shooting. The Bird-Shooting Game was produced between the two world wars. It was a simple target-shooting game in which the participants used basic guns to fire missiles at flip-over targets.
It was provided in different versions, suited to a range of pockets. The example shown was probably one of the more expensive options, with a spring-loaded gun firing corks and four target birds. Cheaper versions used box-lids on which most of the birds shown here were cut off and the targets inside were fewer.

Slogger and Foot-It

I recently obtained a game called Slogger. It is a game based on cricket, but has little really to do with cricket. The idea is that the players use a batsman with a sprung arm and bat to strike balls through holes in a target. The hole through which the balls pass determine the result of the 'stroke'. The game is undoubtedly by Roberts Brothers, and I believe that it dates from the late 1910s or early 1920s.
In keeping with many games of the period it is essentially the same as at least one other made by the company, Foot-it, which uses a soccer players as the projector.
The second image shows the rear of this soccer player, with the spring clearly visible.