Giant Saw Bones Operation Game Hire

The Giant Saw Bones is a life-sized take on Operation, the steady-hand game that's been in the shops since the 1960s, sold these days by Hasbro, and that sat in plenty of front rooms through the 1980s. People in the trade also call it Giant Operation, Body Bits, or just the surgeon game. Ours is a moulded patient, a bald chap with a fixed grin and a round red nose, laid out on a green theatre drape with a row of cut-outs down his body and a set of giant red tongs to fish the bits out with.

Each cut-out holds a daft removable part, and the job is to lift them out one at a time without the tongs touching the sides. Catch the edge and the buzzer goes off, the same as the small version, so the whole table knows you've slipped. There's a red countdown clock at the head end, and the usual run is to clear as many parts as you can before it runs out, with whoever gets the most out winning. The pieces you remove go in the stainless steel bowl that comes with it.

The bits you fish out are the usual Operation-style gags: a red heart, a blue butterfly, a whisk tucked into one arm, a coppery little pouch down in the shorts, and a couple of bolt-and-spring pieces in the legs. People recognise it the moment they walk past, which is why a queue tends to form around it on an exhibition stand, with everyone wanting to prove they've got the steadier hand.

Size, power and setup

• Life-sized moulded patient on a green theatre-style drape, set up on a table or a flat surface
• Giant tongs and a stainless steel tray supplied with it
• Buzzer when the tongs touch the sides, with a red countdown clock at the head end
• Runs off one standard 13amp socket
• Indoors, or outdoors under cover such as a marquee or gazebo; it's an electrical game, so it can't sit out in the rain

Where it suits

It does particularly well anywhere there's a medical or science angle to lean into, like a hospital open day, a medical conference, a university or college event, or a freshers' fair. It pulls a crowd just as well at a corporate fun day, a trade show or exhibition stand, a Halloween night, a Christmas party or a school fête. It tends to be older children and adults who take it most seriously, mostly because they remember the original sitting on the table at home.

If you're after the same nervy, don't-touch-the-side sort of game, the buzz wire works on exactly the same idea. It sits happily on a stand next to the cash grabber or the 80s retro arcade machine, and the rest of the electronic game hire range is on one page if you're putting a games corner together.

The kit, the people, and the paperwork

We've run Monster Event Hire from our unit in Havant since 2002, Joanne and David between us, and the kit is all ours rather than sub-hired in, so the person who turns up is one of our own. The Saw Bones is a tabletop game, so you can run it yourselves on a stand or we can send someone to work it for you, whichever suits the day. Either way our staff are first-aid trained and enhanced-DBS registered, which is worth saying plainly for a school or a youth event. It's an electrical item, so it goes through PAT testing every year along with the rest of our electronic games.

We carry £10 million public liability insurance, indoors and out, with the certificate and a risk assessment yours on request, and we hold the additional licensed-premises cover that lets us work at pubs, clubs and bars, which a lot of smaller firms don't.

Where we cover

We deliver across Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London, from Havant and Portsmouth over to Southampton and up towards Basingstoke and Guildford. Tell us the date, the venue and whether you want it staffed, and we'll put a quote together.