Shopping Finds

A Family Day of Retro Filipino Games

The Havaianas Playback is very relevant to this day and age where video games and media players take a lot of our kids leisure activities. Imagine this scenario.

a) A single venue where you can relive your old-school, game-day glory.
b) An event where tin cans, garters and rubber slippers can test your strategy and agility.
c) A chance for you to prove your street-game cred and prove that you were—and still could be—the player to beat.

And I got to experience being brought back to my childhood days. What a clever event this is. Let me take you to my afternoon stroll at the Havaianas playground.

Look at AJ ,trying to get as high as he can with this Chinese garter game. I don’t recall playing this game when I was a kid in the sixties but I remember my kids playing this in their grade school years.

Piko is one street game that I often played with my siblings in our garage. We lined the pavement with chalk and used a flat stone as our “marker”. Here Jason tries to hop all the squares without touching a line or throwing the market out of the grid.

I can never forget sipa because when I was in high school, we often played this. In Cebu, we called it “takyan”. Since we wore skirts, we often played this with our foot on the side not on the front like how Eric does it, so that our underwear won’t be exposed. Our sipa had brightly colored feathers in it. Ah , the wonderful teen memories when we were not talking about boys.

Now I don’t recall playing tumbang preso unless this is a “tagalog” street game.

Neither the Lakad-lata rings a bell to me but look how Fritz and Ryan trying to race from each other. The winner is …Fritz!

Now I remember Patintero though we called it Tubig-tubig. AJ remembers it as tubiga. Childhood memories brings me back again to our very large garage where we lined the pavement with chalk.

So as you can see, my blogger friends had all the fun (and being competitive). They got the chance to pit their skills against fellow veterans in tumbang preso, piko, patintero, sipa, sungka, Chinese garter and lakad lata, and introduce it to a new generation of street-gamers as well. Plus, a stop at the Prize Station meant they got to bring home a slew of Havaianas premium items.

There’s no better way to play retro street-games with style and relive the irreplaceable memories of traditional Filipino fun.

It was really nice of Havaianas to give old-school, street-game players the chance to play the games that made us champs and then pass the torch to the next generation.

I hope this is NOT the last of the Havaianas Playback. They should continue this project every quarter especially during school breaks. We need our kids to get up from their chairs and start running, jumping and laughing.

Oh yeah, I ended my afternoon by buying a brand new Havaianas pair since they were giving out 20% discount. What a bargain for quality buttery soft flip-flops.

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