A blast from the past

A  month or two ago I played Clue: The Great Museum Caper, where players take turn being the thief, invisible to the other players. Player who steals the most paintings wins. I found the game mechanic of being the thief to be fairly cumbersome.  I expect the winner of that particular game didn't actually follow the rules correctly to begin with, not from deliberate cheating but from the complexity required to track movements.

This got me to thinking about a game I played as a kid, Stop Thief, that was somewhat similar, except that a little hand-held gadget handled the thief's movements, while all the players were competing to be the one who collared the criminal.  My mom had stored many of our neater games, lo all these years, so last time I was at her house I checked and sure enough, Stop Thief was still there! (She'd also kept Dark Tower.. If only the titular Tower hadn't been destroyed by a corroded battery, but I digress).  The kids, grandma, and I have played Stop Thief several times since, it's now one of the new "things we do at Grandma's house", and have found it holds up very well.