What is the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and how it inspired the Absolootly Mad slot?

The most recent addition to the Mega Moolah slots catalogue, the Absolootly Mad slot, is a little different to other Mega Moolah games. While games like the original Mega Moolah and Atlantean Treasures are based on general themes, African wildlife and the legend of Atlantis respectively, Absolootly Mad takes a slightly different approach, being based on an event in one of literature's most famous works.

The Absolootly Mad name comes from the character, the Mad Hatter, who is central to the slot game and who is also a character in Lewis Carrol's famous work, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (note, not Alice in Wonderland).

In that story, the Mad Hatter holds a tea party for a number of guests including Alice, the White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat and more and it is these characters that also form some of the main symbols in the Absolootly Mad slot, although it must be said that Alice herself is a little conspicuous by her absence.

Now we know this 243 Ways to Win slot with Multiplier Trails of up to 15x the standard amount, plus of course, the famous Jackpot Bonus game, which could see you land an incredible Mega Jackpot, which is currently worth just under 13 million, has plenty to offer and the characters that form a key part of it have been very nicely realised.

But what about the story that inspired them? Let's take a closer look at the Alice in Wonderland stories in both literature and film to understand quite where the inspiration for the Absolootly Mad slot came from.

Once Upon a Time There Was... Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was born in Daresbury in Cheshire in 1832. He was educated at Rugby School and then the University of Oxford and is known as something of a multi-talented artist in his day, excelling at illustration, poetry, mathematics, photography and even dabbling in both teaching and being an inventor, as well as becoming one of the UK's most famous authors of fantasy and children's literature.

He began writing short stories, and illustrating them, from a young age and as he grew older, his efforts would be sent to a variety of magazines for publication.

In 1856, while he was at Oxford University, Henry Liddell and his young family arrived to take over as Dean of the college. Amongst his family were three young children, Lorina, Edith and Alice, the latter of whom is believed to be the inspiration for the first of the two books in the Alice's in Wonderland series.

Work on the book began in 1863 and it was completed in 1864, entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground, but in 1865, that was retitled to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for publication by MacMillan the publishers.

The book was a smash hit success upon release. Lewis Carroll, his pen name, became famous around the world. By 1871, work on the sequel to the original story Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There was completed and the story was published, once again to critical success.

The books have remained popular children's stories to the present day and it is perhaps the Hollywood Movies based on the books, more-so than the TV series inspired by them, that have given us our modern day view of how the characters look and sound.

Alice on film

There have been over 20 different films either inspired by or directly about the Alice in Wonderland books, the first a silent film released in 1903. In 1923, a young Walt Disney started directing a number of short silent cartoons called Alice Comedies and it is believed this sowed the idea in Disney's head for something a little more grand.

There's no doubt that the film that perhaps has brought us the most common perception of the characters in the books is Disney's 1951 animation classic Alice in Wonderland. This brought us many memorable characters including the first popular glimpse of how the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit etc all looked and for many years, this film was the benchmark when it came to Alice in Wonderland on celluloid.

A number of other films were made over the years from the 1970s on wards, but most didn't meet with much success. However, one that did was released in 2010 and it is maybe this version of the story that has most directly impacted the Absolootly Mad slot's look and feel.

The 2010 film starred Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikowska as Alice. Also entitled Alice in Wonderland, director Tim Burton brought his own Gothic-inspired look to the film, combining live action, special effects and animation to bring the story to life like never before. Once again, the film proved to be a huge hit and the notably different look of many characters from the Disney film of the 1950s seems to have inspired the look of the new Mega Moolah slot.

Six years after the release of the first film, Tim Burton returned to direct the sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, which once again featured many of the same actors and actresses in their key roles and developed the story still further.

Given that this latest film was released in 2016 and the Absolootly Mad slot would follow less than four years later, it does seem likely that this particular styling was used as inspiration for the games designers as there are a number of similarities between the game and the characters in the Burton film duology.

However, what was interesting was that the game designers have made the Absolootly Mad slot recognisable from the past films and TV shows, while giving it their own twist to make it different enough so that it is not a direct copy. That can be a difficult tightrope to tread and the developers did a fine job doing so.

The actual Tea Party occurs in Chapter 7 in the first book and is entitled a Mad Tea-Party, and along with the Tired Doormouse, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, Alice is in attendance where she is given riddles to solve and stories to listen to. The twist in the tale being that the Mad Hatter reveals that they have tea all day because Time has punished him by making time stand still at 6pm.

So that is the story behind the Tea Party that has been the inspiration for the Absolootly Mad slot. It is somewhat strange to think that a story first conceived back in the middle of the 19^th century, would provide the inspiration for a modern slot game.