Where did the custom of punching your brother everytime you passed a Volkswagen Beetle begin? How did this game end before punchbacks became illegal?
PUNCHABUG…GREAT GAME…brings back memories. Always played this game after Geography and after License Plate Tag.
With the new beetle this game could easily be revived…although it clearly lay dormant during the time the old beetles died out and the new ones were manufactured. my mother made my brother and I in the 70’s play to a specific point total (i.e. 10 punchabugs) during our long highway drives…if there was no point total put in place, my older, stronger brother easily would have taken my arm off at about 2. Mom was able to keep her sanity, I was able to keep my arm…we remain a happy family to this day.
Have no idea how the phrase started though.
I drive a new Beetle (lucky me!) and I frequently see kids on the sidewalk point to my car and punch one another when I drive past, so the game is alive and well. BTW, where I am from (TN), we called the game SlugBug, but in coastal NC, I heard several people refer to my car as a punchbuggy.
As far as the rules go, we played it that the first person, but only the first person, to see and call (as in “yellow Bug over there”) the Bug got to slug the person of his/her choice. It was understood that you got one slug per Bug spotted and called. There was no limit, though. If you saw 15 Bugs, you could give someone quite a beating.
When I was younger, we played “punchbuggy”. It was pretty common knowledge, though, that after calling one, you had to call “no backsies” to keep others from calling it on you. Then you had to call “no backtalk” to keep someone from calling “backsies”, thus negating your call of “no backsies”. It was assumed that “no backtalk” couldn’t be negated.