Voice of the Mummy is the only one I’ve played, and it was over 30 years ago. There’s a little plastic record playing under the mummy that directs the players’ moves. Example: “The Screeching Green Pestilence Brings Death. Take Three Jewels if Your Age is an Odd Number.” Read all the messages here. Séance uses the same concept.
The resurgence of the horror genre in the ’70s was paralleled by a fascination for all things supernatural and occult. Both Rosemary’s Baby (Ira Levin’s fatalistic novel was a bestseller before it was adapted for film) and the musical Hair—promising a coming era of peace and love, the Age of Aquarius—came out in 1967. The hippies, determined to escape an everyday reality that had become toxic to them, also experimented with witchcraft, magic, and paganism.
All of this eventually filtered down to the mainstream and middle class kids. Ouija boards were sold in all the major catalogs. Doctor Strange (“Master of the Mystic Arts”), Ghost Rider, and the Son of Satan were popular superheroes. Everybody saw Anton LaVey or Satan himself in the inside cover of Hotel California (1976). Heavy metal, much of which directly referenced the occult, was charting. Two popular kid’s books with occult themes, Watcher in the Woods (1976) and Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), were adapted by Disney—both of them saw heavy rotation at my Lutheran elementary school on “movie day.”
The Moral Majority would soon put an end to the ride.
A nice reminder that cool, clever toy effects were available before everything had electronics.
I wonder if Milton Bradley took “Which Witch” from the 1969 Scooby-Doo episode, “Which Witch is Which.”
Hmm. A Bewitched comic (#7, Dell) from 1965 includes the phrase “Which Witch is Which” on the cover. Now I want to know the very first time the phrase was used.
wow… that which witch thing looks exactly like the late 80s ghostbusters board game
Yup. From Board Game Geek: “This 3-D, roll-and-move game is a version of Which Witch?, re-themed to match the cartoon series.”
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4893/the-real-ghostbusters-game