Review: Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure
Publisher: Archie McPhee
Year: 2009
Tagline: It’s a Mad Dash Through Meatland on Your Way to the Frying Pan!
how we met
The closest town to me has a thrift shop that I visit on a fairly regular basis. This small-town shop gets its fair amount of valuable, obscure, vintage and modern games. I never know what I will find when I stop there. This time, I found Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure. For half off of 99 cents. What could go wrong?
Mmmm salty
how it plays
Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure is a spin and move game that is essentially a re-skinning of Candy Land. On their turn, a player spins the spinner and moves to the next space on the board matching the meat that they landed on. Alternatively the player will draw a card if they land on draw a card.
A close up of the spinner
Cards may cause your pawn to move, cause other pawns to move, send your pawn to a specific location on the board, etc. Locations offer some gross/fascinating environments based on the meat they represent. But beware the “deceptive detour” of Vegan Alley!
Sample cards
As pawns move along the board they may also encounter slides made out of – you guessed it – bacon. These bacon slides provide a shortcut forward.
It is what it is. It is a bacon slide
The first player to reach the end of the board, throw themselves into the frying pan and shuffle off their raw porcine coil wins!
The long and winding road to the frying pan
how it went
I have no memory of having ever played Candy Land in my youth so I figured I was due. Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure looks cool, but ugh. However our group can’t really complain; our play took about 5-7 minutes because I almost immediately got a card sending me to sail on the Sausage Sea – the location 2nd nearest the frying pan – and continued to spin lucky and avoid any pitfalls. I was in that frying pan in moments. And Mr. Bacon was back in the thrift cycle within hours.
I rarely win our games. I’ll take it.
Check me out!
The official rules offer a variant requiring you to have obscene amounts of meat on hand so you can eat different types as you encounter them. My game group does a lot of silly things, but we did not do that.
play or pass
Yeah, pass. Most of you likely would not have purchased Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure even for 50 cents. I regret nothing. If you are looking to purchase the game for yourself or the bacon-lover in your life, it is still in print and available at Archie McPhee’s website!