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MEMORIES:
tripdownmemorylane remembers...This was a great teaching tool for my son. He loved playing this when he was really really little. We'd ... More »
Posted on 04/12/09
Manufacturer:
Call something an educational game and it is likely to sit on a shelf in the closet gathering dust. To get the kiddies interest, more covert measures are necessary – say by, perhaps, distracting them with a bunch of yummy-looking cherries. Pretty much everyone likes innocent little cherries. Surely, this was a simple game about agriculture, not mathematics.
Introduced in 1960, Hi Ho! Cherry-O was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a learning game for the younger kids in the 3-6 range that snuck in under the radar because it was so much fun to play. Thanks to pictures, even if you weren’t able to read (and if you could, the box would have told you it was an educational game) you could still jump right in and play, for Hi Ho! Cherry-O didn’t rely on words, but pictures – of dogs and birds and spilled baskets and, of course, cherries!
The board was laid out with four trees around the perimeter that each held a total of ten cherries within their grasp. After each of 2-4 players picked a tree, they would spin a wheel with a number of possible places to land. Some of these places contained a picture of 1-4 cherries and the player would pick the corresponding number of cherries off of their tree and put them into their individual basket. Land on a bird or a dog, however, and two of those cherries had to go back to the tree. Land on the dreaded spilled basket and ALL of the cherries had to go back to the tree. The first person with 10 cherries in their basket emerged victorious, not realizing for a moment that their math skills had just likely increased. They were too pre-occupied with the fact that they could now proudly exclaim “Hi Ho! Cherry-O!” designating them the winner of the game. And then, more often than not, kids would put all the cherries back and start over again, and again, and again. Like eating potato chips, one game just wasn’t enough to get your cherry fix.
And while most educational games don’t always enjoy the most robust longevity, Hi Ho! Cherry-O continues to be the exception. That’s right – after almost 50 years on the market, Hi Ho! Cherry-O is still selling in respectable numbers – proving that kids learn pretty quickly, especially when they don’t realize it. For them, it was simply a cherry-pickin’ good time.
