Variations of Mouse Trap

And Now for Something Completely Different, for the 500th published entry on this blog, I am going beyond the typical fare of video game and vintage computer content to focus on another type of gaming, board games.  And in this blog entry, I am going to talk about the evolution of the mechanics of the 1963 game Mouse Trap, first published by Ideal.  Mouse Trap is famous for its Rube Goldberg-inspired mouse trap which dominates the game.  The design has endured more or less intact for sixty years and its combination of simplicity and silly design has appealed to multiple generations of children.  I am aware there are a few other games that use the Mouse Trap name and descend from Habsro or Milton Bradley, but these do not use the traditional Mouse Trap mechanics and will not be covered here.  No game with such longevity has survived into the present day without changes, so in this blog entry I will identify three distinct editions of the game and describe their differences.

First Edition - Ideal (1963-1983)

In the first edition of Mouse Trap, the goal of the game was to be the last uncaught mouse.  In all versions of the game there are four mice and a single die.  The player rolls their die and moves how many spaces indicated on the die roll.  If they land on a white space, they build a section of the trap by fitting it onto the board.  If they land on a colored space, they do nothing.  If they land on a space with instructions on it, they do what is instructed.  The game is effectively split into two halves, the building stage and the loop stage.  

In this edition of the game there are 24 stages to build the trap: Base A, Gear Support, Gear (3), Crank, Gear (5), Stop Sign & Rubber Band, Lamp Post, Shoe/Boot, Stairway, Bucket, Metal Ball, Base B, Rain Gutter, Plumbing, Helping Hand, Thing-a-ma-jig, Bowling Ball, Bathtub, Diving Board, Man, Base C, Washtub, Cage Post and Cage.  The Hand on the end of the Helping Hand pole is detachable and originally came with a metal spring to be put around the pole.  The spring was eventually dropped.

When you get to the loop you are then stuck to the remaining six spaces and you spring the trap if you land on the turn crank space.  There are white spaces in the loop so you can still continue to build the trap if you arrive in the loop with the trap incomplete.  If a player's mouse is on the cheese space and the trap works, then they are out of the game.  There are 50 spaces on this version of the board (not counting start).

I think many children built the trap beforehand or just used it as a toy.

Second Edition - Ideal, Milton Bradley & Hasbro (1983-2016)

The object of the second edition of the game the same as the first and still has the players building the trap as they move around the board and still has the same mechanisms, although colors and styling of the trap pieces changed over time.  At some point the holes in the board were enlarged to give slots so the pieces could fit into them more securely.  By 2010 the larger Bowling Ball had been replaced with a 2nd Metal Ball.

The chief innovation of this version is the introduction of cheese pieces, 52 in this version.  You can collect pieces, lose pieces or steal pieces from another player as you land on certain spaces of the board.  You steal pieces from the player who has the most pieces.  During the loop stage, if you are on the Turn Crank space you can spend a cheese piece to force another player to roll the die and move, hopefully to get them onto the trap space.  If they land on the trap space, you can then turn the crank.  The cheese wedges add a bit of strategy to a game which was previously wholly dependent on dice rolls.  Who do you want to move?  When do you want to spend your cheese?  

A second innovation is that building is staggered based on the number of players.  There are spaces marked with a 2, a 2-3 or a 2-3-4.  If you are playing a two player game, you build a piece of the trap by landing on a 2 space.  If you are playing a three player game, you build a piece of the trap by landing on a 2-3 or 2-3-4 space.  If you are playing a four player game, you build a piece of the trap by landing on a 2-3-4 space.  There are 48 spaces in this version (not counting start).  The designers did not want the trap being built too quickly.  If four players could build the trap by landing on the spaces that two players could build, the trap would be built very quickly.  

I suspect many players disregarded the cheese and the build instructions and played the game like the first edition or used the game as a toy.

Third Edition - Hasbro (2016-present)

The Third Edition implemented changes not only to the gameplay but the trap, ostensibly to make it easier to build.  In this edition of the game, the trap is built before the game begins.  The trap has 26 parts: Base #1, Stop Sign, Lamp Post, Rubber Band, Boot, Stair Legs A, Stair Legs B, Stairs, Bucket #1, Marble, Base #2, Rain Gutter, Wrench, Ladder, Bucket #2, Broom, Base #3, Plumbing, Bathtub, Short Ramp, Diving Board, Diver, Base #4, Washtub, Cage Pole, Cage.  The crank has been removed, you pull the stop sign back directly to hit the boot.  The Gutter slides around the back of the Stairs instead of the front.  The Helping Hand, Thing-a-ma-jig and Bowling Ball have been replaced with the Marble (from Bucket #1), Wrench, Ladder, Bucket #2, Broom and Short Ramp.  In the 2022 version Bases ## 1-3 have been combined into a single plastic Base #1 with the Bathub being combined with its Base to become Base #2 to reduce the game to 23 parts.

I have found that the 2022 version of the game fails most in the action of the trebuchet mechanism provided by the ladder, broom, bucket, wrench and ball.  The trebuchet was intended to eliminate the 2nd Marble of the previous edition. The ball will most frequently overshoot the short ramp.  Also the shoe often fails to kick the bucket over.

There are only 24 cheese wedge pieces in this version, and the object of the game is to be the first mouse to complete a cheese wheel of 6 wedges.  Each player starts with 1 wedge.  If you get caught in the trap, you lose a wedge of cheese to the player who sprung the trap.  You can gain cheese pieces by landing on yellow spaces, lose cheese pieces by landing on red spaces and can steal pieces from any player by landing on a green space.

Unlike previous versions of the game, your mice do not get stuck in a 6 space loop but continue to travel around the board.  If you are the first person to reach the start space after completely moving around the board, you collect two pieces of cheese.  There are 49 spaces in this version of the game and the trap is at the halfway point relative to the start space.  There are several trap activation spaces as opposed to the single Turn Crank space of the previous editions.  The goal of these new rules must be to make the game less predictable as being caught does not automatically result in game over.