For Christmas this year I got one of my favorite games, “Operation”. I unpacked it today, and you know how you get the little cards telling you what to pull out of the guy, and how much money you get for doing it? Well, I noticed that there were two unlike the rest. See the image below: the cards on top are a sample of the first 13 cards in the box, and the cards on bottom are the last 2 in the box.

How lame is that? I mean, I guess they went to the trouble of making the “throw away” parts unique, and they still rhyme like the rest of the other cards do, but gimmie a break. Did they save so much on printing costs that they had to print the cards in multiples of 15 instead of 13? And if so, did they realize that they could eliminate a whole job at the factory by moving the extra-card-pulling task from a paid worker to the end consumer? Maybe that’s why we get to do it now.

But why not take it a step further? As long as they’re cutting corners with the cards, how about they do the same with all of the pieces you’re supposed to be operating on? Spare ribs, broken heart, water on the knee – they could just include the uncut plastic sheet with the next batch, and the consumer has to go get his hands on a punch press, and cut them out himself? If they wanted to be extra nice, they could include the appropriate software schematics to operate the press, so we don’t have to figure that all out from the illustration on the box.

Stay hot, Milton Bradley.