Week Forty-One: Progressive Hearts Party

We like to make a big deal this day and age about viral marketing. We’re so savvy, so tuned in to the way the Plastic Fantastic Madison Avenue Scene plies us with messages to buy buy buy, we just ignore them. Or not. But when someone comes up with a clever way to advertise, such as posting little digital ad boxes all over Boston and thus inciting fears of terrorist activity, we applaud such efforts. And buy buy buy.
End result: Madison Avenue or viral, it’s all the same.

So it’s no surprise that in announcing its Progressive Hearts Party (no, this is not another political movement) that Cokesbury should seek – and win – permission from Parker Brothers, of Salem, Massachusetts, to use and promote its six-pack of Hearts Dice in its party description.

Parker Brothers of Salem, Massachusetts. That sounds awfully quaint these days. A mom-and-pop (or at least a trio of brothers) game shop. Wow. How times change.

So here’s the game, a la Cokesbury:

Heart Dice is played with six cubes on which are written on the six sides of each the letters in the word “Hearts.” These are thrown all at one throw by each player, and the player is only allowed to throw once, after which he must pass the dice to the player on his left. When four play at a table, the players across from each other are partners for that game, and when one of them scores, both can mark the score and it counts for both. However, as one changes partners after each game, each must keep hiss core separately. So the game proceeds, each throwing the dice one time, until one couple gets a hundred, at which time they yell “Game,” whereupon all stop and count up their score for that game. Then all winner at each table, that is, those who had the highest score, progress to the next table, except the winners at the head table, who keep their places while the losers go to the foot table.

Worried you can’t find Hearts dice? (You should be, because I couldn’t). Buy some Boggle games and steal the proper dice out of them. Or just use regular dice (once again, screening your dice-shunning friends) and have fun.

Or just go with some other hard-to-find retro Parker brothers game. Like this:


Scoring is done thusly. (I’d reproduce Cokesbury’s scoring, but it’s the same as referenced on this web page. Besides, it’s less for you to have to read. On this page. Ha ha.)

And that’s about it. You play Heart Dice until you’re sick of it, or until one or more of the following happen:

Prizes. Prizes should be given, a first and second, to the two players making the highest scores.

Simple enough. And:

Refreshments. Have a bonbon dish filled with heart-shaped candy at each place. Get ice cream in heart mold and serve with cake at conclusion of play.

Once again, Cokesbury at the end of the party drops all pretence of articles and begins speaking in this odd patois. Can’t be helped.

Anyway, get ready to have big fun at Cokesbury’s next extravaganza: The Birthday Party, in which you get to celebrate all of your friends’ and acquaintances’ birthdays at once, once again proving what a cheap bastard you really are.