Playground games we use to play...

[theantiquetiger]

What are some of the "deadly" games you played in empty lots, playgrounds, backyards, etc?

I remember:

King of the hill (title explains it all)

Smear the Queer (all against one, tackle the guy with the ball)

Dodge ball

Indian Wrestling

Mud Clod war (it is like a snowball fight but with balls of mud)

Bottle rocket fights (only twice a year)

There was also a game where one person held his hands palms up and other guy palms down directly over the hands of the other guy's hand. The guy with the palms up hands would try and slap the top of one of the other guy's hands. If you were successful, you got to "frog" the guy in the meaty part of the forearm, just below the elbow.

I think all these games have been banned from school now.

Smear the Queer had nothing to do with gay people, this was titled way before the word was associated with the gay community.

[Mikey]

We used to play Dodge Ball with a baseball --- no BS

Man, that hurt like hell

[theantiquetiger]

Growing up next to a horse ranch, we even had a few "horse poop" fights. If you know horses, you know their droppings are pretty much round and fit nicely in the palm of your hand (after being dried in the pasture for quite some time).

[Mikey]

Here in Jersey, you can't walk 10 feet without walking in horse****

[Zemo]

Jailbreak was a classic. Had a friend with a huge heavily planted yard and at night the game would go on for hours.

[SUP-Ronin]

Smear the Queer. Totally.
Somehow it seems inappropriate and culturally insensitive now.
Oh well. Look what they did to Mugato, and he brings in a ton of cash.

[toys2cool]

smear the queer? oh my god that's funny man no offense to anyone though

I played almost all of those,what about freeze tag and burn ball?

[batmanmc]

manhunt kickball tag

[Bo8a_Fett]

British Bulldog got very nasty sometimes as did someone throwing a sweet/toy/marble/card or coin and shouting "BUNDLE"
Also huge games of football (soccer) with about 50 kids per side and no rules...

[toysrus]

Old games

Dirt Bomb fights in my neighborhood! And Manhunt all the time! Freeze Tag was big also.

[The Toyroom]

Chicken fights on the hill next to the school playground....banned VERY quickly though.

[SUP-Ronin]

We played "Assassin" in school with those toy pistols that shot the yellow bb's or the disks. Big trouble getting caught with those. Everyone who played would pay like a dollar and the winner would get the pot. You drew a name of someone else that was playing and then had to take them out, but only in between classes, at lunch, or on school grounds before or after classes. No one ever considered that they would start doing it for real, like today.

[Hulk]

Capture the Flag *with tackling

Trench (variation of Dodgeball)

Tackle Football (without pads of course)

Mercy/Uncle (fingerlock until someone cries Mercy)

Punch for Punch (similar to Mercy, but with punches to the upper arm until someone quit)


And maybe we were too innocent to associate "Smear the Queer" as being anti-gay at first, but it was (and most of us eventually came to realize it). Basically it was simulated gay bashing, insinuating that the person running away was worthy of being "smeared'. I played it, enjoyed it, but let's call it what it was, a politically incorrect game that was allowed to exist in an intolerant society when political correctness wasn't even a term yet. Like these other games, they were tests of machisimo when we were raised with the expectations that boys will be boys (and stop playing with dollies when we hit puberty).

[monkey tennis]

"BUNDLE"

[mitchedwards]

Kickball was big throughout elementary school. We also played Red Rover