GAME OF THE MONTH

GIANT COOTIE by Schaper, was made from 1949 through the late 1970's.   Interestingly, the Giant Cootie was always manufactured with Herb Schaper's classic design.   Unlike the regular Cootie, which got a "cute" facelift in the early 1970's, Giant Cootie remained the same, suggesting either Schaper was too cheap to make new "cute" Giant Cootie molds, or they had a LOT of stock they were still trying to get rid of, even into the late 1970's...

With a face even a Mother would be hard-pressed to love, GIANT COOTIE was a regular Cootie on steroids...   It's at least 10 times bigger than a normal Cootie.   Each Giant Cootie is almost a foot wide and a foot long!

Giant Cootie is so big, it's also a bank!   You could almost ride on it (well, not really)...   By the way, doesn't this thing look a lot like the "face hugger" from the movie ALIEN?

I guess if you had Giant pieces, you needed Giant dice...   and since they didn't have that, they included this strange spinning top (like a Dreidel), which is actually a throwback to very early American board games of the 1800's...   Normal Cooties are dwarfed by their Giant Cootie Cousins, as seen in the picture to the right...

As noted earlier, GIANT COOTIE continued to be sold well into the late 1970's.   Although the original 1949 Giant Cootie, in it's almost 2" tall box, is pretty scarce, these games are even rarer.   The game on the left is in a very small box, and there's only 1 Giant Cootie inside!!   What the heck is the point?   Maybe that's why the cover proclaims "It's a Toy!   It's a Bank!   It's a Game!"...  The fact that "it's a game" is 3rd on the list confirms that Schaper always felt the Cootie was more of a Toy than a game anyway, but why include just one?   The whole idea of a game is competition, and you couldn't even do that with this...  Either way, it's very rare.   The middle Giant Cootie is from 1972... 2 came in this box (Thank God!)...  I've never seen one of these, as evidenced by the crummy photo I borrowed...  Very rare.   And the third Giant Cootie is from 1978, and by this time the company was almost out of business.   Again, strange how they would have "allowed" this ugly Giant Cootie to be sold alongside the revamped "cute" Cooties...  Also very rare.

Why did Schaper make Giant Cootie?   I mean, there's no "giant" version of Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders...   I'm not sure of the reasoning behind it, but I'm glad they did.   The "Giant Game for 4" is a Giant hit with collectors!