"Th-Th-Th-That's (Not) All, Folks"

It was another hot night in Monopoly town, meaning we had the kitchen louvre doors open all evening to let in the cool air (and flies!).

Compounding that, we were all exhausted for various reasons. However, the evening's Looney Tunes theme brought out the best in all of us and the evening's thrilling game went down to the wire.

The theming of this 26-year-old set (which Pete had purchased second-hand, via eBay, from the States but was still in pristine condition) was top class. 

The overarching idea, as I grasped it, was that you were film company executives "hiring" the stars (the individual properties) for a variety of animated features (the completed sets).

Houses and hotels became "TV sets" and "movie theatres", while cash money was replaced with "laughs". Every denomination of "laugh" featured a different famous Looney Tunes character.

A That's All Folks card I picked up during play

"Chance" and "community chest" became "What's Up, Doc?" and "That's All Folks!", and, again, these were all decorated with black and white sketches of famous cartoon characters.

An added treat that we all approved of was special abilities that could be gained from rolling doubles. These ranged from being gifted "laughs" from all the other players to removing competitor's properties from the board.

The pewter playing pieces, representing well-known faces, were gorgeous (and I kept thinking how cool they would be painted up like wargames' miniatures).

Rachel initially chose Daffy Duck, but then switched to Bugs Bunny before we started

Rachel was Bugs Bunny, Pete was Marvin The Martian, Clare was the Road Runner, and I picked Wile  E. Coyote to be my avatar.

After a slow start - getting used to the board and its idiosyncrasies - I suddenly realised I was actually doing rather well. Thus it was a huge surprise when I bankrupted Pete, who, in recent games, has been on a hot run of luck.

Then Rachel walked into one of my cunning traps and I bankrupted her as well.

Which left Clare and I in a head-to-head tussle (rather appropriate for Wile  E. Coyote and the Road Runner) with our mandated 11pm cut-off fast approaching.

Although I had the bigger bank balance and property portfolio at that point, Clare managed to hang on and force a draw (according to our club rules, which I wrote... so I can't complain!)

Clare and I share the trophy as Pete looks on 

Thus we both shared the Acme Looney Tunes trophy and got four points each on the league table (see below). This left the pair of us still tied in second place (although Clare has the advantage of having played one less game).

The trophy!

Even going out first in this week's game, Pete maintains a commanding lead that's going to take a number of similar results in coming months to stand a chance of any of us overtaking him.

When it came to judging the gorgeous board and its adherence to the Looney Tunes theme, the only genuine issue we had with it was the difficulty of discerning the actual names of the properties.

While the name of the particular cartoon (the set) was prominent on the board and relevant cards, the actual individual name (the cartoon character) was comparatively small. Yes, they featured coloured pictures of the characters, but not every one was immediately recognisable in the heat of the moment.

Check the picture at the top of this post and the one immediately below to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Nevertheless, this was a minor glitch in an otherwise perfect set, so we rated it at 9.5 out of 10, on a par with the posh Indiana Jones set. And Looney Tunes didn't even come in a wooden box!