“Yes, of course now is the exact right time to launch this game!” according to Willie, “The World Cup is now on and we are not a part of it! So then all of a sudden I got this idea. This board game MENS ERGER JE NIET should become MENS ERGER JE WEL. The board game looks really beautiful, a wooden playing field containing real football-figures; those things are actually caps to seal a bottle. That is so typical for Willie, he’s a very creative person.
Oh yes, Willie certainly loves tinkering. His neatly organized shed contains a lot of stuff. You can find materials belonging to already finished games, but also other things that can be used for future purposed. Because he is always thinking about new games: “I just surf the internet to find out what’s out there and I then I will put a twist to it. Or I just invent something new. ”
Willie tells us how it originally started: “We wanted to do some family games on our Neighbourhood-day. So I was browsing to find out where you could rent those games. That turned out to be very expensive! And they weren’t even that nice! So then I thought, I might as well design my own games! And that’s how it started. At first the games were pretty basic. But last year I thought: “Willie, you have to pimp them!”
And so he did. He added more colour to the designs and started to use other materials than just plain wood. He found out you can buy plastic tablecloths with beautiful designs like fishes or chickens. Or a whole African scenery.
There is also a game with a background of roosters and chickens. “Peet van de Loo played this game once. She had to throw these colored eggs into the right box. So I put in the exact same bins we are using in the waste system in Best. I said to her: “So, now you can see it’s not so easy to put something in the right box !!”
There is also an ‘ranja tap’ with Donald Duck or (especially for Best) a large mole. But never of a clown or a dwarf: “Children are afraid of them because they always look angry!”
He roams the flea markets to find materials and is pretty good at it. Beautiful, old cones and balls, a water pump, it’s all there. At least more than enough for Willie to keep busy!
