How it's played:
Englishman.
Conkers !
by Simon 21 Replies latest social family
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searcher
Ah Conkers !
Memories of my childhood.
And my kids childhood.
Now I have grandkids growing up.
Never ending.
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Brummie
We played them all the time as kids, bruised knuckles all round.
Just last week my kids got me putting the string through conkers so its still played a lot here.
I was thinking of putting the hole through a stone from an avacardo pear and pretending its a conker...I like cheating.
Brummie
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frenchbabyface
hey sweet daddy : did they try yet ? did Liam and Dylan like it as much as you did ?
by the way never heard about this game before ...I've tried some old games with my son but he didn't stisk to them because other children wasn't playing them anymore. One of them is calls "osselets" you can play it with 10 stones : you take them in one hand and you threw them in the air have to put the same hand on the ground and then you have to catch them with the same one hand till you only got one. did anyone play that game when he was a child ?
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zev
hey!
is that a pack of marlboro's in his pocket or what?
kids start smoking at an early age in G.B. huh?
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xjw_b12
Conkers....you Brits are bonkers !
I remember a toy we had as a kid, but I think it was called Clackers. It was too large glass alleys/marbles about the size of a golg ball, attached to a 2 foor piece of string. The idea was to let the too "balls" hang down at an equal length, and see how many times you could bounce them together.
Perhaps a variation of Conkers.
Clackers are the toy with a jillion names. It was essentially two large marbles attached by a sturdy string with a ring in the center. You would put your finger in the ring allowing the marbles or balls to hang below. Here is where the fun starts. The idea was to get the two balls tapping (or clacking if you prefer) against each other by pulling up on the ring lightly. Once you got the hang of it, you could get them going faster and faster until they were smacking each other above and below your hand in a stunning arc.
These toys are now legendary. They started finding their way into the schoolyards in the early seventies and in 1971 were yanked from shelves because kids were suffering eye injuries when the fragile, glass-like balls were shattering from the violence of contact with their mates. I believe a plastic version may have been released after the original and the more menacing version was pulled, but I don't think that it enjoyed the same popularity.
One of the main obstacles in locating this toy today is knowing what to call it. There were supposedly over 80 copy-cat products on the market during Clackers hey-day. During your search expect to see names like:
Bonkers
Clackers
Clack Clacks
Click Clacks
Crackers
K-Nokkers
Ker- Knockers
Klackers
Klick Klacks
Knockers
Mini Poppers
Moon Rocks
Popper Knockers
Rockers
Super Clackers
Quick Klacks
Quick Clacks
Quick Wacks
Wackers
Whackers
Whak KOsBecause of the abrupt halt in production and distribution there were truckloads of these toys dumped on the secondary market. This is good for collectors today because it means that there are lots of these toys out there still MIP selling in the $10-$20 range.
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xenawarrior
LOL XJWB12- That is exactly what I was thinking when I saw conkers too ! We used to play with those clacker things all the time. Lots of bruises on the wrists from learning how to use them too. Haven't thought of those in a while !!
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Englishman
Conkers are chestnut seeds. You drill a hole in them and suspend them on a piece of string. Someone else does the same with another conker. One of you holds up a conker while the other one swings at it with his conker. Whoevers gets smashed first loses the game. If your conker destroys the conkers of six other people, your conker is awarded the grand title of "Sixer".
I my vast (ha ha) experience, the flatter the conker profile, the more destructive it becomes.
Englishman.
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GentlyFeral
Bonjour, Frenchbabyface,
"osselets" you can play it with 10 stones : you take them in one hand and you threw them in the air have to put the same hand on the ground and then you have to catch them with the same one hand till you only got one.
I see that osselets is called fivestones or jackstones in Britain.
Sounds a little like an American game called jacks. Instead of touching the throwing hand to the ground, our kids bounce a little rubber ball and have to pick up a "jack" before it hits the ground a second time. Each time you throw the ball, you have to pick up one more jack than you did before.
The jacks are little metal things that look something like caltrops. It's a girls' game, almost exclusively.
GentlyFeral
