Hasbro Capitalizes on Beer Pong - Granite Grok

Hasbro Capitalizes on Beer Pong

"Cuponk!  Beer pong without the beer.The Greatest Name in Games" has paved the pathway to future Beer Pong excellence with a series of "games" called Cuponk.  The object of Cuponk, a creation of Hasbro, is to get a ping-pong ball in a cup doing any number of special moves or trick shots using whatever surfaces are available.  The cup makes noise to reward you for your talents and if you actually use the cards provided, and complete the trick called for, you can get points and keep score.

Fortunately for us, you should not put beer in a Cuponk cup.  I suspect the electronics will not like it.  I can’t comment on whether the instructions warn against such amendments to the manufacturers guidelines, they seem to have gotten about as much attention as a 2000 page piece of legislation in the US House.  Or maybe I threw them out with the wrapping paper.

It’s a cup and a ball. How frikkin complex could it be? "Mind it I play through?"  ‘Oh by all means?’

Other than the obvious ban on fluids, this is a serious opportunity for your children–recommended for ages 9 and up by the way–to avoid being the future victims of the kind of heavy duty binge drinking that being a bad beer-pong player might subject them to  and all the manifold consequences that come with it. Puking, passing out, having someone write "As* Hole" on your eye-lids in Bogota Blackberry colored nail polish.  Finding out that the companion YouTube video (the ten minute mini-documentary you never authorized) went viral for the three days it took you to shake off the hangover.  Not the best way to discover that someone wrote "if you can see this call 911" on your Glutes with three different kinds of Sharpie.

But that could all be avoided thanks to Cuponk.  Just imagine the awe (and your own personal pride) at hearing stories about how your college age child–at an investment of anywhere from $15-50K per year–can put a ping-pong ball into a cup-o-beer with more style than Tiger Woods can sink a mini-golf putt off the rail, through the windmill, under the waterfall and…Cuponk!

I admit to being a bit jealous.  When I was growing up the only gateway game to the old school version of beer pong, that would be quarters, was tiddly-winks and they are not exactly kissing cousins when it comes to physics, technique, or much else actually.  You needed felt or carpet, and two tiddly’s to get a wink.

Launching those little Lincoln logs using the roof slats to make catapults was probably closer on the scale of equivalence if, for example, your best friends face was doing duty as the "glass."  He may still have some emotional scars but you guys never talk anymore, and no one can lay siege to the cubicle wall like you can can.  While you may have failed community college you can still build an office siege engine and hey by the way, no one really sells the right kind of kitchen table to play quarters on anymore anyhow and they kick you out of the diner if you try to take that show on the road.

And yeah, while I’m at it, we did only have a handful of TV channels, at least one of which was PBS with Jacques Cousteau and the Electric company, and that was where we all learned who the Ford Foundation was–though not what a bunch of liberal douche bags they were until later.   And every channel came in like crap unless you lived on a hill or had an antenna on your house the size of the VLA in Socorro New Mexico, and even then someone still had to stand by the TV and hold onto the aluminum-foil wings molded to the rabbit ears on the set top. 

Want to find out if your modern American family has a pecking order, dump Comcast, buy a roll of Reynolds Wrap and get a set of Rabbit ears.

We did have beer.  And Ping pong.  And we mixed them, but just like in Softball, while the beer was a target, which did encourage people drink it faster, it really wasn’t the same thing.

And now we have Cuponk!  The beer pong training program from Hasbro.

And no, I’m not very good at it.  Not yet anyway.

 

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