Top Trumps

Playgrounds would heave with Top Trumps when I was at school. They were standard issue in all their guises and were possibly only upstaged in Autumn when the first conkers hit the ground. I have recently been collecting up old Top Trumps from eBay for their insipidly printed photography and have managed to gather some rather vintage looking sets of old steam trains, tanks and commercial airliners. Even now, I can hardly resistant laying them out in rows to see their collective wonder.

As a game, the appeal of Top Trumps is fairly short lived, but conversely I think this is also the factor that made them so popular. Aside from having a short attention span as a kid, the average playtime break at school was between 10 and 15 minutes; just enough to complete a round or two. There was also the fact that your fortunes could rapidly change in the game, which is a bonus in the harsh world of playground politics. With two or three cards left you can easily soar to victory if the right stats are called. After the game, the cards could be stowed in your blazer pocket and cycled through during a dull assembly to stay awake.

Top Trumps are still going strong and although some of the new series are dubiously themed, the sentiment is still strong and I applaud their place in game history. There’s something quite special about the quick-draw physicality of it the game and the way that it plays on patience, honesty and raw cunning. However, the burgeoning world of handheld video games is casting a dark cloud upon the world of Top Trumps. Perhaps kids just aren’t as bothered about the statistics of engineering triumphs these days. Still you don’t need batteries for a game and where else would you get the brake-horsepower for a Panzer Mark IV tank?