Look, to be fair, everyone in Australia approximately between the ages of 23 and 32 secretly wishes they were a contestant on wildly popular and way-too-short-lived after school kids game show A*Mazing, a staple of Channel Seven‘s pre-news broadcast schedule between 1994 and 1998.
We all yearned to be one of those kids doing the key run through the super awesome maze after slaying a bunch of gnats on Mario Paint or burning seventeen billion kinds of rubber on Mario Kart. And every. single. one of us would’ve known to check BEHIND THE GODDAMNED CACTUS or INSIDE THE FREAKING PENGUIN’S BELLY. We would’ve been going home with that Game Boy. No sir, it would not have gone wanting on the day WE ran that badboy like a freakin’ pro.
The point I’m trying to make here is – other than the fact that Channel Seven needs to re-hire James Sherry and put A*Mazing back on the air but have adult contestants and air it at 6:30 on Saturday night in direct competition with Australia’s Funniest Home Videos in the “pre-drink viewing before people go out” timeslot (you’re welcome, programming division) – is that within us all is an innate desire to apply the childlike wonder of certain elements of our youth to the large-scale wonder that is our adult world.
It’s just that despite that desire, there’s a little thing called pointless bureaucracy that always holds us back from achieving our dreams.
To wit, overnight on Facebook an event that called for a large-scale game of Hide & Seek to take place inside the IKEA at Tempe in Inner Sydney swept through everyone’s feed; a concept that people gleefully took to – at last count some 32,000-odd people had indicated they were attending the May 23rd event. Oddly enough, 1,300 people said “maybe.” What honestly have you got that’s better to do than play a mad round of hide & seek inside IKEA? It’s May. Nothing else happens in May.
Unfortunately for all of us whom enjoy giddily silly childish things like this, IKEA has to contend with a little thing called “customer safety.” The long and short of it is that the idea of 32,000 people showing up to stuff themselves into oversized vegetable crispers whilst people tear-arse around the store turning the Mjärcø Pøelø into the store’s hottest new item isn’t exactly the most appealing move, business-wise.
In a statement, the Tempe store asserted that playing the game inside the store “raises security issues for both customers and co-workers.” And that “at all times Ikea must be able to guarantee a safe environment, therefore we encourage people to play hide-and-seek at other places.“
Which when you’re dealing with a potential crowd of thirty two thousand people showing up on a Saturday, is probably a fair enough sentiment, truth be told.
The move also mirrors similar bans placed in stores overseas, who have also had unofficial hide & seek games attempted to be planned via social media. In 2014, a Belgian store officially held a game of hide & seek for 29 year-old Elise De Rijck who had the activity penned on a list of things to do before she turned 30.
So there you have it, kids. Moderation. It’s all about moderation. Be cute with it, go through the right channels, don’t try and Corey Worthington it fer pete’s sake, and maybe *just maybe* you might have a shot at hiding in a bathroom display cabinet whilst your mates giggle like schoolchildren and pith around the existentialist wasteland that is an IKEA showroom.
Seriously though, bring back A*Mazing, dag nab it.
Photo: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images.
via SMH.
