The other night Boak & Bailey tweeted a photo of a UK eBay listing for a card game published in the 1930s by Watney Combe Reid & Co. LTD, brewers of Watney’s Red Barrel.
One of the many things I’m obsessed with is games. Since I was a kid, I’ve played them, collected them, and even created them. It’s just one more thing to add to the ever-growing list of things about which I’m particularly geeky. So I was already familiar with the card game Happy Families, which is a fairly simple game, and is somewhat similar to “Go Fish.” But I had no idea that a brewery had made their own version of the game.
Based on the box, it was obviously a giveaway to advertise the Watney’s brand. Intrigued, I would have bought it on the spot, except that, as Boak & Bailey noted, the “Buy It Now” price was a hefty £64.95, or about $100. Beer writing, unfortunately, doesn’t pay well enough to indulge all of my whims. Still, I wanted to know more about the game, and set out to see what I could find.
It was apparently created in England in 1851, by John Jaques II, who was also responsible for inventing “Snakes and Ladders,” “Tiddlywinks,” “Ludo” and the pub favorite “Shove Ha’penny.” It often uses a custom deck of 32 cards, although the game can be played with a standard deck of 52 cards. Cartamundi has the rules online. In the Watney’s version, the rules are printed on the back of the cardboard box:
In the Watney’s version, the families are the Barrels, the Cheerilads, the Combes, the Hops, the Malts, the Reids, the Stouts, and the Watneys. According to The World of Playing Cards:
Although the 1920s was a decade of optimism after the Great War, the Great Depression made the 1930s a difficult time. In Britain unemployment was widespread. As we see from these images, the woman was the homemaker and had a hairdo, and the man worked. The generation of children who grew up in the 1930s would go on to fight in World War II. They had their share of hardships and built strong values of hard work.
Below are the 32 cards from deck:
For two of them, they apparently didn’t have a finished card, so here’s those cards taken from the eBay listing photos.
Hopefully, I can find a less expensive deck of these cards. Great, another item to add to my Wishlist.
Odd to see the class system so much in evidence in what one would suppose to be a fairly classless pastime.
Agreed, Miles – some of the “families” definiely show “upward mobility” as it was then (live off family money until you find a white collar job). And the “blue collar” workers are over-dressed in their portrayals – I can’t imagine publicans (even then) wearing jacket & tie, especially if they were person on duty & had to change out a keg or do some other “dirty work”.
Edit on previous post – I left out “the only” btwn “they were” & “person on duty”. My bad, for which I apologize.