This game, donated to the Museum in 1991, is based upon a popular prime time sitcom that was telecast from 1978 through 1986. Re-runs of various episodes were telecast on weekday mornings from 1980 through 1983.
The content of the telecast was based upon Jeraldine Saunder's experience as a cruise hostess, and the show was named for her novel "The Love Boats".
The "love boat" in the telecast was named The Pacific Princess - which was one of the two ships the show was filmed on. The other was the Island Princess. This was a luxury cruise show that took passengers on a weekly cruse in tropic climes. Continuity was provided by the same principal cast:
Captain Merrill Stubing - Gavin MacLeod (left)
Bartender Isaac Washington - Ted Lange (next)
Cruise Director Julie McCoy - Lauren Towes
Purser Burl "Gopher" Smith - Fred Grandy (next)
Ship's Doctor Adam Bricker - Bernie Kopell (right)
Each episode included three or four interwoven stories of a different group of passengers - often played by famous motion picture and television actors. Since the boats were actually cruse ships on cruses, they included "paying passengers" who often functioned as extras in the plots.
The game board (on the left) is a "track" board map of the world. Various episodes of the telecast were cruses to such places as Alaska, Australia, the Mediterranean, China, etc. Players of the game using a chance device and "markers" placed these on the "track" to the destinations selected. As on the show, the game provided "opportunity" to "shop" at ports or view architectural wonders (cardboard pictures in the lower right of the photograph).
Last update May 29, 2010