Ten years of success: Zicke Zacke Hühnerkacke

Munich - A new limited edition of the anniversary version has been pub-lished and has become almost presentable. We are talking about chicken poop. “Zicke Zacke Hühnerkacke“ is being played in countless preschools and children’s rooms, accompanied by loud calls of chicken poop. At first one or other teacher was piqued by this. Now the highly acclaimed children’s game, published by Zoch, is being successfully used in psychotherapy.

There is hardly a game which fascinates kids as much as this one does and challenges them to a similar extent to think and compete. From the start kids were enthusiastic about the concept of stripping the feathers of slower chickens to add them to their own tail and they still are. A survey commis-sioned by the publisher last year demonstrated that the game is extremely well known to children between the ages of four and nine years. 

It was in 1988 that the Munich games publisher Zoch finally made their breakthrough onto the market with this children’s game with cuddly wooden chickens. They have been cackling persistently for ten years. More than 700,000 copies of this outstanding memory game, awarded the famous title "Sonderpreis Kinderspiel des Jahres 1998" and the "Deutschen Kinder-spielepreis 1998“, have been sold. It has appeared in more than 20 foreign editions and has won several prizes throughout Europe. An extension has been added so that six can now play: “ZIcke Zacke Entenkacke“ with two ducks and six chicken droppings, which delights the kids all the more. 

A whole family has developed around the chickens, creating a complete ”chicken world“ of its own with seven additional games, two picture books and cuddly chickens, developed in cooperation with Sigikid. Each of these associated ideas bears the trademark “Zicke&Zacke“. The names of the games are as attractive as the enjoyment of the games themselves: Au Backe, Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck, Hick Hack in Gackelwack or Gloria Pictoria. To date 1.4 million games have been sold from the chicken run alone. But that is not the end of the success story. A few months ago the Munich production house Caligari bought the movie and TV rights. It shouldn’t be long before we are able to watch Zoch’s chicken world on the big or little screen. 

The author of “Zicke Zacke Hühnerkacke“ is none other than the name giver of the publishing house himself, Klaus Zoch, born in 1953 in Walpurgis night (the night of April 30 is the year’s other night of witches, spells and magic). He prefers life in the Vosges in France with chickens, goats and rabbits, to the stressful daily routine of a publisher. Maybe the idea for this game came to this highly creative spirit and physics graduate while he was feeding his farmyard chickens. No doubt the spectacular title, the unique graphic trans-lation by Doris Matthäus and the haptically beautiful chickens, which still cut fine figures, played a decisive role in the success of the game. That is why a special limited edition with a pert baseball cap is on the market for the tenth anniversary in the year 2008. (For 2 to 4 players up from 4. Price about 32 Euro)

Munich, February 11, 2008

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