Top Trumps

A series of children’s card games from the 1970s, excellent for introducing the idea of taxonomies to aspiring young legal eaglets.

The JC gets all figurative →Go uptown the venerable and, in Top Trumps terms, utterly hopeless, Opel Kadett. Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Metaphor Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Each game would feature a certain general type of things likely to appeal to schoolboys (military planes, supercars, dinosaurs, famous prostitutes, mining machinery and so on), each card listing its subject’s standardised attributes. For example, “top speed”; “brake horse power”, “turning circle” — that kind of thing.

Gameplay

The dealer deals all cards evenly. The first player plays her top card, nominating the one of its attributes she thinks most likely to win (for example, “Rover 3500 Van den Plas: engine size: V8”). The other players in turn play the top card in their hand, reading out its score in that same category. At the end of the round, the player whose card had the best score wins all the cards.

The game ends when one player has accumulated all the cards (unlikely), or a row erupts over what “two wankel engines” is supposed to mean, and the player of that card (who thought it should beat the Lamborghini Countach, because “two engines is obviously better than one”) storms off because everyone else agrees there is no possible universe in which a crappy two-litre hatchback beats a V12 supercar.

Metaphorical power

An excellent metaphor from time to time, especially for frustrated losers like me who always ended up with the frigging Opel Kadett, when some other ingrate is waving around the Rover 3500 Van den Plas.

See also

• The JC’s own FWMD Top Trumps game
• Top Trumps
• Rotary Mazda
• Rover 3500 Van den Plas
• Opel bloody Kadett - the Supertramp of seventies automotives.
• If military aircraft are more your thing, eight jet engines