The television series Dark Shadows started in 1966 but really became popular in 1967. In 1968, a board game company named Whitman came out with a Dark Shadows board game. It was a typical 1960’s game that wasn’t that outstanding. In 1969, game company Milton Bradley came out with another game called the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Game. Its name came from the popular vampire character of the show. The commercials for the game showed that it had several glow-in-the-dark pieces. Seems like glow-in-the-dark could sell anything at that time and it made this game a must have for kids my age.
My friend Nan got one of these games for Christmas. At the time we were 7. While the game was recommended for ages 6 to 14, the game was not very straightforward. The object of the game was to accumulate glow in the dark skeleton pieces. I don’t think we ever understood exactly how you were supposed to get these pieces. The way we ended up playing the game, it was almost impossible to acquire any of the skeleton pieces. I don’t think we ever completed one round of the game. It didn’t help that we were trying to include my sister who would have been 3 at the time.
Whoever assembled a complete skeleton was declared the winner and got to wear the glow-in-the-dark fangs. No one ever won any of our games when we tried to play. We would take turns wearing these fangs and pretending to be the vampire. We would also turn out the lights to watch the bones glow-in-the-dark. But when we did that, we couldn’t see to play the game. Playing with glow-in-the-dark bones was more fun that playing this game. Even wearing fangs that just came out of the mouth of a 3-year-old was more fun that playing this game.
