Small card (barely the size of a postcard) offered as a promotion for Pātes Brusson Jeune. I admit that when I first described this game some 15 years ago I did not think much about it, and I just dated the game as being "from the 1960s" without further research. As far as I can remember, I did not compare the stages in the game with any real Tour de France edition (I guess I started to do so later on), or I wondered who or what "Pātes Brusson Jeune" might be.

Time to make amends.

 

 

Let's start with the stages. The game offers a 17-stage Tour de France, starting and finishing in Paris, with a selection of stages typical of the interwar period.

First of all, the start in Paris almost rules out a 1960s Tour. While the race began in Paris every single edition until 1950, with the sole exception of 1926, it stopped doing so from 1951 and never returned except in 1963 (and 1986, if you count Boulogne-Billancourt as Paris).

The number of stages: The tour invariably had 15 stages from 1910 to 1925. In 1928 it already had more than 20 stages and never went under that number until 1937, but by that year there were already double (and triple) stages, which were introduced in 1934. Thus, a 17-stage Tour is not really conclusive.

The stages: The tour first arrived at Lille in 1933, and it did not stop doing so until 1938. (By the way, all those Tours except the last were run clockwise, Paris-Lille being the first stage of the race. (From 1928 to 1932 we had 5 consecutive anti-clockwise editions, the last stage of which had been Dieppe-Paris. Before that, all the editions between 1911 and 1927 had a Paris-Dunkerque or Dunkerque-Paris stage, with the only exception of 1926, which nevertheless had a stage at Dunkerque.)

To make a long story short, the closest Tours to the one presented in this game are those of 1935 and 1937. They had more stages, but the ones they had were quite similar to those represented in the game. Both editions were run clockwise.

 

 

Back of the card

Now let's talk about Pātes Alimentaires Brusson Jeune: The company was founded in 1872 in Villemur-sur-Tarn and quickly grew and branched out into new sectors such as bakery, rusk, and diet products. By the 1930s, it had acquired a national and international dimension. At that time, the BRUSSON factory in Villemur employed 440 workers and employees, and the company had another factory in Belgium. World War II stopped the progress of the company, which nevertheless did quite well until the 1960s, though at the time their production was centred on biscuits rather than pasta. In the 1970s the company was absorbed by Panzani.

Had I researched all that when I included this game on the website, I would have never said that the game was made in the 1960s. My current guess is that it is a game made in the 1930s. However, I am not really sure when the Supralta brand, which still exists, was introduced. My guess would obviously be ruined if it were introduced later. Feel free to send your opinion.

 

 

Cut up riders and counters
 

Nowhere in the game is marked the direction of the game. I assume that the game is played clockwise, though it would probably make a better Tour if played the other way round, starting with the shorter/flat stages.

Players draw one of the 5 chips (from 150 to 350 km) and advance if the value of the chip is higher than the length of the stage they face, or else stay if it is not so. The game is equivalent to playing with a D5 die and having to throw at least 3, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 (the Alps!), 3, 5, 4 (the Pyrenees), 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3

I find these mechanics quite representative of real cycling (though, of course, very simple). Maybe the game could be improved by adding more riders per team and trying to find some tactical variations. Anyone?

In the meantime, I put this game in the "Game Of Goose" category (under "map games"), since the players do not have any influence on the outcome of the game. Nevertheless, I am not very satisfied with this decision.

Description rewritten in June 2025

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