OK, this game predates the 1980’s a little, but I remember having it as a child and enjoyed it immensely, so I’m going to tell you about it anyway. The game was a licensed game to accompany the classic movie Jaws, but instead of the aim of being to catch a killer shark, it was actually more like a playful approach to shark dentistry.
Probably the closest comparison to the Jaws game is Buckaroo, although it’s kind of a reverse Buckaroo as your trying to remove items instead of add them. The game consisted of a cool plastic shark with a flappy mouth that snapped shut thanks to a couple of elastic bands, and a variety of different objects such as a bone, a gun, a broken wheel, an anchor and various other martime related items.
To play the game you pulled the sharks mouth open and dumped all the items inside, which weighed it down enough to remain open. Players then took it in turns to carefully remove an item from the sharks gaping maw using a plastic hook, that did look surprisingly like one of those pointy tools that dentists use to scrape the plaque of your teeth. If you weren’t careful the sharks mouth would suddenly snap shut, trapping the hook and making all the players jump out of their skins!


August 29th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Ah, one of the regularly unfulfilled requests on my Christmas wish list (although Mr. Frosty still remains the leader in that department).
The only time I got my Jaws fix was during Games Day, usually the last day of school before the Christmas holidays, where you didn’t have to wear school uniform and you could bring games into school for everyone else to play/break.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am
It was a very good game - far better than Buckaroo in my opinion. I mean, sharks are way cooler than donkeys, aren’t they?!
August 29th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
We had Jaws, I always remember some of the ‘junk’ you had to get out of its mouth was really fiddly and got caught on other stuff, I think there was a handbag?? and the bits that were chunkier and easier to get hold of were heavy and so caused the jaws to shut, (I also remember the elastic band that snapped the jaws shut used to come off! and I think we used to loose the hook as well.)