Hollywood will turn anything into a movie these days. Case in point: Envision Media Arts announced this week that they were making an animated Pez movie, presumably featuring talking version of the company’s famed candy dispensers. The popularity of The Lego Movie inspired movie studios to snatch up the rights to all sorts of toys and games. Jem and the Holograms comes out this fall. A movie based on the Monopoly board game is on the way. Heck, even the neon haired Troll dolls have a film in development. So what beloved toys from our youth are left for Hollywood to poach and turn into a blockbuster hit? Here’s a list of five obscure toys just aching for the blockbuster treatment.
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Bop It
If you were an uncoordinated child, Bop It was the bane of your existence. Children played Bop It by passing around a small rod, which called out instructions to “Pull It”, “Twist It” or “Bop It”. Depending on what the toy demanded, you had to either push, pull or twist one of several buttons or levers fastened to the toy. Bop It required intense concentration, cat-like reflexes, and the patience to not hurl the device through a window whenever it arbitrarily decided you weren’t moving fast enough. So what could Hollywood do with a Bop It toy? Perhaps a dark, distopian movie, where society finds sport in deadly contests involving the sinister rods. If the Bop It screams…you die.
Gooey Louie
The Gooey Louie game taught children how to pick noses for sport. Players would roll a dice to determine how many boogers they had to pull out Louie’s colossal nose. However, at least one booger had a catch: it would cause Louie’s brain to literally explode out of the back of his head, the result of a massive and deadly sneeze. Gooey Louie would be the perfect candidate for a heartstopping medical drama, starring a group of young, brilliant and sexy surgeons performing a daring experimental nasal surgery to save an unfortunately large nosed man’s life.
Water Snakes
I’m sure at least one grandparent gave you a Moebius strip-like water snake as an ill-conceived Christmas present at some point. The tubular toy was literally just a clear plastic tube with water in it, sometimes mixed with glitter. The water snake naturally slipped out of hands when squeezed, giving children minutes of fun before they got bored with it and put it on a shelf to gather dust. Water snakes might not look like a hot Hollywood property, but combine them with some sort of natural disaster (like Water Snakano or Water Snake Daracho) and I bet the SyFy Channel would have their next big hit on their hands.
Crossfire
Crossfire was a board game that involved shooting ball bearings from tiny mounted guns at two pucks in a small arena. Players would try to push the pucks into their opponent’s goal, while protecting their own goal at the same time. Crossfire was a boring and repetitive game, but Milton Bradley released a pretty awesome commercial involving two children duking it out on hoverboards over a flaming arena of death as adult spectators cheered. Hollywood could turn that Crossfire commercial into a two hour movie and it would probably make millions.
Don’t Wake Daddy
Don’t Wake Daddy was a board game where players snuck around a house at night, trying to reach the kitchen for a midnight snack. Landing on the wrong square would cause players to push an alarm in the middle of the board, hoping that it wouldn’t cause a sleeping plastic paternal figure to jump out of bed, sending a tiny nightcap flying across the room. Don’t Wake Daddy is perfect property to turn into a tragic tearjerker, featuring a group of small, starving children stealthily sneaking through the house, trying not to wake their abusive father. You’re welcome, Hollywood.
What board game would you like to see as a blockbuster movie? Let us know in the comments.
