Skeezix Visits Nina

I thought for the longest time that I had imagined the whole thing.


My dad, born in 1927, kept a ton of his toys from his childhood. One toy was a board game called "Skeezix Visits Nina". He let me play with his toys and I distinctly remember finding this game, realizing it was missing pieces, and drawing on the inside of the box to make it into a different kind of game. Probably pinball-based. I was very into pinball at the time. It was a time before video games.

In the late 90s I mentioned the game to Dad and how now, as an adult, I regretted writing in it. I said it was probably worth money and he nodded and joked a little about how writing in it must have killed the value.

Then in 2005 when both parents were gone and I had to clean out the house, the game was nowhere to be found. I really wanted to see that game again, too. So I came home and looked the game up online. Nothing.

For 4 years, nothing. Not a peep about the game anywhere on the Internets. I started to think I had imagined the whole thing, because the Internet is the repository of all human knowledge.

Until this guy listed one on eBay recently. (Link goes to the Italian version of eBay, the only one I could still find cached). His was complete and didn't have any writing so it wasn't the one we had -- which was a possibility since the seller lives not too far from where my parents lived -- but it's the only one I've seen since my dad's.

EDIT: I forgot to mention you can find the game on BoardGameGeek now, too. Same pics as the auction.

The game was boring, by the way. It had a spinner (missing in ours) and a board that was just paper glued to the inside of the bottom of the box. The board was a single path with a few little special spots along the way. You spun, moved your SweeTart-shaped piece along that many spaces, and if you landed on a special spot you followed instructions. First one to Nina's house won.

For very very low values of "win". I still wish I had this game again, though.