Happy Halloween week everybody!
Does anybody out there remember Trick or Treating for UNICEF?
Your Humble Narrator does. Sometime in the early '70s, I went out with a group of kids from church onto the chilly October streets of North East, Pennsylvania, each of us carrying our little orange cardboard boxes, to collect dimes and quarters and nickels for the United Nations Children's Fund from long-suffering folks in the area.
It was fun, though I seem to recall it had a half-hearted, dutiful feel. The prospect of helping kids in other countries didn't have the same appeal as the self-serving, tooth-rotting, greedy orgy of candy collection that would follow on Halloween proper.
I've thought about this recently because of a junkshop find I came across: a 1979 UNICEF "World Card Game."
It's a Go Fish/Authors style game, but with open globalism and class judgement; it's fun to imagine the right-wing pants-crapping with which it would be met today!
Although the art appears meant to look like it was drawn by kids, it says the "concept & illustrations" are by Nico Van Oudenhoven, so it's apparently grown-up art.
In the directions, we're told that "The World Card Game is meant to be enjoyed. Yet it also has a serious purpose. It invites you to think about what is going on the world, and to become interested in the various lifetsyles throughout the world. The game tells you something about development and change as well. It offers more than one way of looking at the world. When the game is completed the players might take a few moments and discuss whether they agree with the different things that characterize each category."
Anybody up for a game?
I was also cheered to find that Trick or Treating for UNICEF still goes on, though now, of course, with a heavy online component.
