h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One person is the statuemaker, one or two people are buyers, and the rest are statues. No one likes to be a buyer, so playground supervisors are often cajoled into taking on this less active role.

The statuemaker forms the statues by grabbing the arm of one of the statue people, swinging them around several times, and letting go. The position the person lands in is the position of the statue (which means that the person basically needs to freeze like that for the remainder of the game). Before the statuemaker swings the person around, they ask the statue person if they want "salt" (slow), "pepper" (fast), or "red hot pepper" (extremely fast).

After all the statues have been "formed", the buyer(s) enter. The statuemaker then has to try and sell the statues to the buyers, usually by explaining their interpretation of the statue and bargaining for a good price. In some games, each buyer has a set amount of money to spend, in others they simply each buy one statue.

Then the game starts over again with the positions rotated - often the first statue to be purchased will get to be the statuemaker for the next game.

Common variations:
1) Moving or robotic statues. As the statuemaker presents each statue to the buyer, he taps them on the head. At this signal, the statue person does some kind of repetitive movement (i.e., a "ballerina statue" might do spins or jumps, or a dog statue might roll over). The statue stops when the statuemaker taps them on the head again.

2) In some games, the statuemaker decides to "destroy" the unpurchased statues at the end of the game, which basically involves pushing them over so that they will "break" on the ground.


(Note: due to its mildly violent nature, this game is best played on a relatively soft surface, like grass.)


Mikey

I remember friend of mine 'inventing' this (so she said at the time - around 1983)...or something very similar . The rhyme sung was "Eggs, bacon, chips or cheese? What do you want before you sneeze?" whilst we were spun around. After all the statues were made she would then say "action" and all the statues would act out the position they had landed in and she would try to guess what they were doing. Memories...