Released by Milton Bradley in 1989, the Santa’s Special Delivery board game let children play Santa Claus as they hustled to deliver all their gifts and return home.
GAMEPLAY
The goal of the game was to be the first player to distribute their inventory of gifts and return to their home space.
Each player chose four gift tokens and a sleigh pawn, which was placed on the designated home space of the corresponding colour. The youngest player started the game.
At the beginning of their turn, a player spun the spinner. The spinner was illustrated with six colours — green, blue, purple, red, orange, and yellow — and a cheerful portrait of Santa. The player moved their pawn along the path to the colour indicated by the spinner.
There were four types of stops along the board: a coloured space without a symbol and coloured spaces illustrated with a gift box, star, or arrow. Landing on a space without an illustration meant the player’s turn was over. Landing on a gift box space allowed the player to drop off a gift at the nearest house. A star space meant that the player could give a gift token to an opponent who still had gift boxes of their own to deliver. An arrow space offered a shortcut that moved players to a gift box space where they could drop off a present to the nearest house.
Once a player had delivered all their gifts, they moved to the star space closest to home. At this point, players were safe from having an opponent burdening them with another gift box. From the star space, opponents raced to be the first player to spin their home colour to win the game.
IN THE BOX
A complete game included a game board, spinner, four sleigh pawns and stands (red, blue, yellow, and green), and 24 gift tokens. Instructions were printed on a cardboard platform inside the box.
SPIN TO WIN
Milton Bradley published many games that included spinners as the randomizing component in gameplay. In addition to Santa’s Special Delivery, Milton Bradley games with spinners included Scooby-Doo Where Are You! from Milton Bradley (1973), Land of the Lost from Milton Bradley (1975), Bargain Hunter from Milton Bradley (1981), Inspector Gadget from Milton Bradley (1983), and others.
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