I teach English to children in Japan, and my students noticed a picture of kids playing jacks in one of our storybooks. They’ve been begging me to teach them how to play, but I can’t find a set of jacks anywhere. I’d like to have six sets shipped to Japan. Does anybody know of a toy store I can contact?
I thought I should come back and put this in the right section. It was originally in Running Around. There are some responses there as well. But this area is definitely more fitting. 🙂 Also, if anyone ever finds a supply of Chinese Jacks for sale, please please PLEASE let us know!!! ——————————————– CHINESE JACKS!!! They’ve got to bring those back!!!! I spent almost the entire early 80s playing that game. If you’ve never heard of ’em, they were hard plastic rings, about the diameter of a dime, that came loose in a pack. The rings were split so that you could put the individual colored rings around a center ring. You fretted over the color of the rings in the pack you were selecting and you alternated the colored rings as you put them together to make pretty and unique combos. You would buy more packs to make the jacks denser. Not too dense though! They had to have enough floppiness as to not pop off of your hand and accidentally hit the ground while you were furiously tossing and catching them. If I remember correctly, you ended up with 5 jacks that almost looked sorta like today
At the age of 76( 2 years ago) I decided to teach my grandsons to play jacks,(They had no idea that it was a girl game,poor innocents.) What amazed all of us was that I had not lost my skill, after all these years.While they fumbled I went from one astounding manoever to another. I told them I had been block champion and they believed me. I would have been,too, if there had been a competition.Care for a game,anyone?
And how about flipsies for one– you know, you hold all the jacks in the palms of your hands cupped together, flip the jacks in the air so they land on your hands touching right-side-up (is that the right way to put it?!), and then you flip the jacks back into your cupped palms? It sure saved picking up the jacks one-by-one! Favorite place to place forever will be the porch of the bunks at our day camp!
Kissies – I haven’t heard that in years. Where was your favorite place to play jacks? Mine was on a painted concrete porch, preferably just swept with a broom. Did you play with ten jacks and pick up the jack while the ball was bouncing? Then, you would transfer the jacks to the other hand and catch the ball with the hand that picked up the jacks (like everything with your right hand)? I’m sure different areas played differently just as we sang different songs to jumprope. I grew up in Baltimore and that’s how we played.
My memory about kissies was that you picked up the kissing jacks, held them in the air a little bit above where they had been sitting, and let go and let them drop. Where they then ended up was where you played them. I guess if you ended up w/another pair of kissies you did it again w/them, but I’m not sure about that.
We played jacks at the edge of the ballfield in the playground at the corner of W.115th Street and Belmont. As I rember it, we only played jacks after we had a vigorous workout on the handlebars, the swings and teeter totters and while we were having a carton of cold chocolate milk which was deliverd to the playground every day in the summer. This may have been just after WWII. I was never really very good at jacks, but my Sister Nancy was the expert. Recognizing her superiority, I usually gave up before the game was even over….