Turducken
From The Tic-Tac-Totality
Contents |
Summary
A Turducken is the physical game system used to play all the games contained in the Tic-Tac-Totality. In its essential form, it comprises chips, labels, and dice, which are contained within three nested bags. It is a traditional after-dinner Thanksgiving present, to be ceremoniously tossed in the general vicinity of an unsuspecting niece or nephew.
Components
A Turducken comprises the following components:
- Labels: Labels are preferably white and removable round stickers, 3/4" in diameter. At least a dozen are needed in order to create the minigame chips necessary for Tic-Tac-Totum, although they are not necessary for any non-Totum games.
- Bags: Bags are preferably cheap, sturdy, and able to be tied shut. Three bags are used, of different sizes: 3 1/4" x 5", 5" x 7", and 8" x 10". Other sizes may be used, as long as the bags can be nested.
An incomplete Turducken can still be used to play many or even most of the games in the Totality, depending on what pieces are missing. Check the infobox of each game to find out how many chips and dice are necessary.
Acquiring a Turducken
At this point, given the prices charged by retail sources, the minimum orders required by wholesale sources, and the base costs for acquiring the rubber stamps, the cheapest way to acquire a single Turducken—or any relatively small quantity of them—is to buy it from this website.
Acquiring and Assembling 80 Turduckens
Acquiring
To acquire the components for 80 Turduckens, one can buy from the following sources:
- Chips: ($200) U.S. Playing Card Co. (better known as the makers of Bicycle products) has boxes of 100 chips for $2. You'll need 96 boxes, and might as well round up to 100 so as to have spares. Make sure you get the Red/White/Blue kind, not the Maroon/Beige/Blue kind—they're hideous.
- N.b: Be sure to call them up and ask about damaged boxes; they're willing to sell them at 50% off, and it's nearly always only the box itself that's damaged, which you'd be recycling anyway.
- Dice: ($150) Koplow has excellent cheap plastic dice. You'll need 400 of each of the five colors of square 16mm dice. By item #, that's 3 each of #01990, #01978, #01980, #01982, and #01988.
- This actually only comes to $132, and their minimum first order is $150 (after that it's $75,) so poke around and find $18 more of whatever. I'd recommend spending $9 on 20 spare dice of each color—by item #, that's 20 each of #01947, #01949, #01951, #01959, and #01961—and then $9 on a nice wooden dice tray (#11888) for yourself.
- Labels: ($7) Staples sells sets of 1,000 white 3/4" labels for $7. They also provide a printer template in MS Word.
- Bags: ($50) Packco has decent cheap cloth drawstring bags—although see "Assembling" below. You can only buy them in lots of 100, but 5% or so will probably be sub-standard anyway, and everyone likes a few extra bags around the house. You'll want 100 Chicken bags (MP-3255PB, $10), 100 Duck bags (MP-57PB, $14), and 100 Turkey bags (MP-810PB, $26).
- N.b.: While these sizes are acceptable, the Duck and Turkey bags could definitely stand to be an inch or so wider. Packco accepts custom orders of 5,000 pieces or more...anyone interested in participating in such a large-scale custom purchase should post to the discussion page.
- Stamps: ($100) All of the images required are available for download Simon's Stamps makes reasonably-priced custom traditional wooden rubber stamps. You'll need three different sizes of the url: 1/2" x 2" ($8), 3/4" x 3" ($10.50), and 1 1/4" x 5" ($18.50). You'll also need the three icons: the Chicken (1 1/2" x 1 1/2", $10.50), the Duck (2" x 2", $14), and the Turkey (3" x 3", $24). You'll also need their largest stamp pad (3 1/2" x 6 3/8", $12), in either black or violet, depending on your aesthetic preference.
- N.b.: Fancier and more expensive styles of rubber stamps (self-inking, stainless steel, etc.) are also available.
All told, this comes to about $500 with the initial cost of the rubber stamps (around $6.25 per Turducken,) or $400 (around $5 per Turducken) without. Lower prices, of course, come with bigger quantities—consult with these sources and others to see what sort of volume discounts are available.
Note: All implied endorsements are entirely provisional; anyone who knows of an inarguably better deal should not hesitate to edit this page, and anyone who knows of an arguably better deal should post it for discussion.
Assembling
- Getting the bags ready is the bulk of the work:
- First, tie knots in the ends of all of the strings, so they don't creep up into the bag and get lost forever. This is annoying, but is at least mindless enough that it can be done while watching TV or on the phone. This is also a good time to give each bag a little vertical tug, just to make sure it's not liable to come apart at the seams.
- Then, stamp the bags on both sides with the appropriate icon and url. Don't worry too much about getting the stamps exactly centered or evenly dark; the cloth-bag-and-rubber-stamp aesthetic is, if anything, enhanced by minor human error.
- Now, fill each bag:
- Put five dice of each color in the Chicken bag.
- Include a folded sheet of at least 36 labels in the Duck bag. Leave at least half of them blank, but it's recommended that you pre-print some common minigames on the other half, along with a center chip design.
- Put 70 white chips in the Turkey bag, along with 35 red chips and 35 blue chips.
- Finally, tie the Turkey bag shut, using a bowtie or other simple knot. Voila: you have successfully assembled a Turducken.
Selling Turduckens
As of now, the only Market page is that of the webmaster, but anyone who wants to can create a Market page and start selling Turduckens, or Turducken accoutrements. Someday soon, we'll even have a Paypal button and all that good stuff.
