We had a board game (in the early- to mid-70s I guess) called Mine A Million. You had to transport stuff (gold?) from mines to a coastal port by putting the stuff in little plastic barges and trucks. When you earned enough from that you could afford a ship and then transport your stuff from the coastal warehouse to an overseas port for the big bucks.

I used to love it for the little trucks and boats, but I don't think it sold well because I don't know anybody else who has heard of it.

I had this in the late 1970s - and it was rubbish. Made by Airfix, no less.

The object was to land a plastic Phantom fighter jet onto a cardboard aircraft carrier. The plane was just attached to a loop of fishing line suspended between two pulleys - one attached to the end of your joystick (fnarr, fnarr) and the other attached to something sturdy.

There were two problems with the game. Firstly you needed a lot of space, so I could only really play with it outside. Secondly it was so bloody boring, as no actual skill was needed to land the thing. Thirdly you needed to manually wind the plane back to the start before the next mission.

There was a later Super version which launched the plane as well as letting you land it. It was still bollocks, mind.

Two satisfyingly sturdy six-sided metal die-cast rollers, a pocket scorebook and a pencil. Hours and hours spent before teatime. And you tell the young people etc etc

I don't think I ever played it, not even once. I just used to get it out of the box occasionally and make the trap up.

Game of Life - that was another rubbish game that I always though was trying to be a take on Monopoly, but was just boring.

Now Monopoly, on the other hand, was the undisputed king of board games! My step-brother and I would play for days on end - even leaving the part-played board under the bed for the two week gaps between his visits. Unfortunately, we never really got the point of the game and when we ran out of money we just started writing IOUs, so no one ever really won or lost!

I recently bought Mousetrap for my class, as I wanted them to experience the pleasure of ignoring the game itself and setting up the trap, as we had done as children.
Well, if it used to be hard to get the trap to work, it's now actually impossible. They've made it even harder, partly because they've cut costs and used cardboard in places where they used to use plastic. It's now a complete waste of money and a blimmin' scandal.

By the way, I didn't have Subbuteo cricket, but Test Match was excellent: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4784

The king of companies. Saw me through my childhood - and probably kept my mom and dad sane - until the point at which I first discovered you could have more fun with a Debbie Harry poster.

Super Striker, the football game where you pushed the players heads down to make the leg move! The weird thing was that they all looked like Denis Irwin, and this was in the 80s!

Waddington's attempt to cash in on the success of Monopoly. A horse racing board game played on a two-sided board, (training first, then the big race). My brother and I spent many a winter evening playing interminable games of Totopoly and gaining much amusement from cards with indecipherable messages like "Frost ! Members may use tan gallops". Also dabbled in Buccaneer, another dodgy Waddington game - Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum !

Actually did play this quite a lot

Gave you bad trigger finger and you had to have your hand over the top of the gun to stop the ball bearings falling out

I'm not making this up:

Elite Cow was a game sanctioned by the British Dairy Board (or some such) and it involved breeding the prize bull by visiting one square to pick up some semen and then delivering it to some other square (the randy cow square?) to um... I don't really know. I guess it involved a syringe.

I think I was very young and I suspect it was the first time I had ever heard of the word 'semen': I seem to remember pronouncing it to rhyme with 'seven'. I can only imagine my dad's face when we sat down to read the rules and got to the semen depository bit. I wouldn't have noticed - I was too busy playing with the cows...