Home » Searching for Freddy and His Friends at the Hopewell Harvest Fair

Searching for Freddy and His Friends at the Hopewell Harvest Fair

by Community Contributor

I know I am biased, but Find Freddy truly is my favorite part of the Hopewell Harvest Fair. Where else do you get to race around searching for movie stars and monkeys? Hopewell’s only “living scavenger hunt” brings out the creative and slightly zany side of our town – whether you are searching for Freddy (the Hopewell Elementary School mascot), playing one of the characters roaming the fair for an hour, or just watching it all happen.

Find Freddy was created in 2001 by long time Boro resident, Bob Milwicz. He came up with the idea at the height of the “Where’s Waldo” popularity, the puzzle books where you search each picture for Waldo and many other characters. But Bob wanted to bring it to life and give it a Hopewell twist – so who better to represent Hopewell than our school mascot, Freddy the Frog? And Find Freddy was born.

In its heyday, the Find Freddy game featured over 50 living clues with a huge range of characters: Mr. GreenJeans, The Bronx Bomber, Major Tom, a Princess Looking for her Frog, and countless others. Some clues are easy to spot – like cowgirl Jesse – listed as “Woody’s Gal.” I Love Colors copySome are easy to spot, but tricky to solve – Mother Nature confused a lot of contestants last year by listing her clue as “You Can’t Fool Me!” And sometimes you need to have really sharp eyes. Last year one of the trickiest clues was “a pair of giraffes hanging out with the elephants.” If you made your way to the Save the Elephants Booth, and looked closely, you would notice the volunteer staffing the booth was wearing a pair of giraffe earrings. And, yes, a few of our contestants did find her!

Kim-OnoThe mix of clues is very intentional. As the current organizer of the Find Freddy contest, I want young children to have fun looking all over for crazy characters but, at the same time, I want to add an element of difficulty for those up to the challenge. This formula is what makes it a great game for all ages. The primary goal of Find Freddy is to HAVE FUN! But if winning a prize is your thing, your other goal will be to find as many clues as you can in one hour. Prizes (donated by local merchants) are given out to the “Most Spectacular Searchers” in three categories – Adults, Children, and Adult/Child Teams.

All of our “clues” last year had a wonderful time – and a few of them even won great prizes for being “creatively clever” or just plain “fantastically fabulous.” Want to be part of the fun? Please visit www.tinyurl.com/findfreddy for more details and to register as a clue – the more clues we have the more fun the game is! Not feeling creative? No worries, we’ll help you out!

Want to try out your searching skills? Visit the Find Freddy table in the Contest Tent at Harvest Fair before NOON on the day of the Fair. Tickets are $1 each, full contest rules are here. Where else can you get 60 minutes of entertainment for only one dollar? Don’t miss it!

 

Heidi Wilenius

Hopewell Harvest Fair, Find Freddy Chair

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