There was always something very accessible about SCUMM games (not just LucasArts ones, but they certainly had some great ones). The story lines were simple and playful enough for kids to enjoy--even 8 year olds can understand the humor in an evil purple tentacle trying to take over the world, or a talking dog and rabbit solving crimes, or a quiet biker trying to repair his motorcycle.

It didn't take an intricate story or fast-paced action to set the LucasArts games apart from the competition. It was how simple, yet outlandish the plots were. 15 years later, I can still remember using a crowbar to remove a coin from the ground that was stuck there by chewing gum in Day of the Tenacle, or Ben Franklin naming a sandwich after a main character (Hoagie). I remember SCUMM games much in the same way I remember the plots of my favorite books I read as a kid. For me, they were much more like interactive novels or comic books than they were like video games. I remember Full Throttle, Dig, Loom, Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle in a very different way than I remember the other video games I played at the same age (Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Super Mario World).

If you haven't had a chance to play any of these wonderful titles, I would highly recomend you grab the ScummVM and play some of the freeware titles (even if they aren't LucasArts): http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games.