Morgan’s Revenge Game – In the Collection

As a person who grew up around dreidels, I know a thing or two about poorly designed top games to keep kids quiet (I think two is the max though). And that’s exactly what Morgan’s Revenge is, a “game” where one spins a top and sees what happens. Gambling at its most basic and silly.

The package comes in a nice canvas, drawstring bag, with the name printed on. Apparently, they’ve trademarked Captain Morgan’s face though. On the back mine says “Fort Worth Zoo”, I don’t know what the relation is there since I’ve never been. As might be inferred from that I did indeed get this second-hand, and unfortunately, I have no instructions. Fortunately, the game is as simple as can be and if you know what the letters/numbers on the side of the top mean you’ll never forget how to play.

To play each player gets a number of coins (there are 12 included, half of which are silver and say “2” but should probably just be used as singles for the purposes of the game {and you’ll probably want more coins anyway if you’re playing with more than 2 players}) and then everyone places one coin in the middle. Each player then takes a turn spinning the top and doing whatever action it lands on. The six action are: take a coin from the middle, take 2 coins from the middle, take all the coins from the middle (and I think, wonderfully enough, everyone has to put one coin out at this point), put a coin in the middle, put 2 coins in the middle, and everyone puts a coin into the middle. So as you can tell it’s super fun and interesting… for children… for a few minutes. At least the top can be persuaded to spin well enough to be entertaining for a little while.

Actually, the production’s quite nice, and the coins are very realistic (besides having “copy” stamped in them) and weighty, being made out of real metal. And the nice heavy metal top is fun to fondle and spin a bit. It goes together well and fits nicely in the bag, but I suspect that, like me, people are really buying this for the coins, and not for any entertainment factor that may come from randomly taking coins out of and putting them back into a pile in a manner that is very similar to one many Jewish people know but never had any interest in actually doing. It’s a nice little souvenir if you don’t think much about it (like most souvenirs).