For a more complete history of American games, published in the journal Board Game Studies 2 in 1999, click on this link to be taken to the pdf article: American Games – A Historical Perspective
THE EARLY GAME MAKERS
The game industry in the U.S. grew up in the Northeast. Most of the major manufacturers were in Massachusetts or in the New York metropolitan area. One noteworthy company, R. Bliss, was in Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania had its share of game companies, as did, to some extent, Ohio and Illinois.
W. & S.B. Ives of Salem, Massachusetts, is credited with being the first major manufacturer of games in this country. The firm published at least two dozen games in the mid 1800s, including DR. BUSBY, a card game, and the MANSION OF HAPPINESS, once thought to be the first American board game; Parker Brothers, the company that bought out Ives in 1887, reissued the MANSION OF HAPPINESS in 1894 and included on the gameboard the line “The first board game ever published in America.”
John McLoughlin produced card games in New York as early as 1850. His first card games were attractively hand-painted, in what was an early form of an assembly line–the line drawings were passed from artist to artist with each one responsible for coloring in one of the colors. In 1858 McLoughlin formed McLoughlin Brothers, a company that was to manufacture what are considered today some of the most beautiful games ever published in the United States. McLoughlin Bros. reached its heyday in the 1880s and was a prolific manufacturer of games until the company was bought out by Milton Bradley in 1920.
Many other companies produced games in the United States during the mid and late 1800s, but none had the impact of Ives, McLoughlin, and America’s three giants in the game industry, Milton Bradley, E.G. Selchow, and George S. Parker.
THREE LONG-LIVED GIANTS
McLoughlin had been selling games in New York for ten years when Milton Bradley started his company in Massachusetts; independently, the two companies, along with Selchow & Righter the following decade and Parker Brothers the next, began what was to become the game industry as it is known today. The three giants, Bradley, Selchow, and Parker, remained independent, family-owned companies until the latter half of the twentieth century.
Milton Bradley Company. Milton Bradley, a lithographer, started business in 1860 in Springfield, MA. He enjoyed early success when he packaged a series of games, including THE CHECKERED GAME OF LIFE, in a pocket-sized game pack (the country’s first “travel” game) designed for soldiers during the Civil War.
Following the end of the depression in 1879, Milton Bradley kept pace with the rapid changes in theories of education, and his company produced school supplies and optical toys in addition to educational games for youngsters and their families. His was the most prolific company of the period, and by 1900 he had incorporated, with offices in New York, Kansas, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Selchow & Righter. In 1867, when Elisha Selchow founded E.G. Selchow & Co. in New York, he also obtained the rights to PARCHEESI, THE GAME OF INDIA. PARCHEESI was trademarked in 1874–one of the oldest trademarks for an American game. In 1880 he changed the name of the company to reflect his new partnership with John Righter. Until 1927 Selchow & Righter were “jobbers”–they sold other company’s games.
The smallest company of the “big three,” Selchow and Righter was a steady producer but didn’t develop another game classic after PARCHEESI until it started making SCRABBLE in the 1950s.
Parker Brothers. With a passion for inventing games, George S. Parker started a company in his own name in 1883. Five years later one of his brothers joined the firm and Parker Brothers was created. The company’s 1894 catalog stated, “Our new factory (in Salem, Mass.) is the only large building in America devoted exclusively to parlor games.” Whereas Milton Bradley’s games seemed to be aimed predominantly at children and the family, Parker geared a number of products to the family/adult market.
A CHANGING SOCIETY
Innovations in printing allowed for the mass production of games by 1860, and the work of the hand-coloring artist all but disappeared. During the 1880s and 1890s, rebounding from the depression of the ’70s, companies such as McLoughlin Brothers, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, R. Bliss, E. I. Horsman, and J.H. Singer produced well-made games with exceptional lithography; some of the games were quite large, using wood for the box frame and incorporating bone dice, metal tokens and figural wooden playing pieces turned on a lathe. Though many games were still educational, fewer involved moral teachings, and games became accepted as a form of leisure recreation for the family.
American society was changing rapidly. Industrialization led to a migration from the farms into the cities. Immigration rose significantly, causing an infusion of different cultures into the U.S. mainstream. There were major advances in transportation and communication. Companies expanded their regional sales areas and competed for the same dollars.
THE EARLY 1900s
Companies turned to cutting costs to increase profits. After 1900, there were fewer large games produced, and wood boxes were used less frequently. Less attention was paid to the ornamentation of the lithographic design. J.H. Singer went out of business. Game production slowed because of the financial panic in 1907, followed by the first World War. By 1915, John McLoughlin, Milton Bradley, E.G. Selchow and John Righter had died, and Bliss was no longer making games; E.I. Horsman turned from games to dolls. In 1920, one of the McLoughlin brothers died and McLoughlin went out of business (bought by Bradley); other, smaller companies had folded as well. The game industry was being run by–and catering to–a new generation.
Parker Brothers cut back on the development of new board games and began to focus more on card games. In 1902 Parker introduced PING-PONG to the United States, followed by two classic card games in 1904 and 1906: PIT and ROOK; ROOK, invented by Geo. Parker, became the largest selling card game in the world. The company also began manufacturing a line of wood jig-saw puzzles which were of superb quality and became quite a fad in the teens and ’20s.
THE 1920s
The “Roaring Twenties,” a time of gaiety (and gangsterism), was a boon to the game industry. The end of war meant industry could turn from the war effort to the home front. Americans had earned the right to enjoy their leisure. The UNCLE WIGGILY game, born in 1916, soon proved as popular as the books on which it was based. MAH JONGG became a craze, and Parker Bros. and Milton Bradley, as well as a host of smaller companies, cashed in. CHINESE CHECKERS, introduced by a new company, J. Pressman Co., also became a fad. Alderman-Fairchild (All-Fair) of upstate New York began producing beautiful board and target games, while another new company, Wilder, of St. Louis, MO, started manufacturing boxed board games with wonderful lithography. Wolverine Supply & Mfg. began manufacturing games on lithographed metal boards. Selchow & Righter Co. stopped jobbing other companies’ games and started making their own. The Toy Manufacturers of America, headquartered in New York, became a strong, cohesive force for the industry. Many events–the discovery of Tut’s tomb, the first continental airmail route, Lindberg’s flight, Byrd’s development of a “Little America” base in Antarctica, and America’s fixation with the automobile–all became the subject of games, as games continued to reflect what was happening in society. And then came the Great Depression of 1929.
DEPRESSION AND GROWTH
The Depression wasn’t felt by the game industry until around 1932; like movies, games provided inexpensive entertainment during troubled times. BACKGAMMON was revived and jig-saw puzzles became quite popular. Most firms weathered the difficult period, and 1936 and ’37 began another boom, with companies filling sturdier game boxes with more parts and pieces than ever before. Milton Bradley, noted for putting games into classrooms, made a classroom into a game and issued GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS.
New companies emerged, among them Cadaco-Ellis, Gabriel, National, Rosebud, Russell, and Whitman. Transogram managed a transition from playsets to games.
Parker Brothers’ big break came when the company bought MONOPOLY in 1935. No proprietary game (one owned by a particular company) ever gained such popularity around the world. The story is that the Depression paved the way for a game that allowed people to buy property and make millions, but one wonders why a similar game from a few years earlier, Milton Bradley’s EASY MONEY, didn’t meet with equal success.
ANOTHER WAR
Once again, the country had to turn it’s manufacturing efforts toward defense. Companies such as Wolverine could not use metal for their gameboards, and the metal tokens in other companies’ games were changed to composition pieces. War games and games promoting patriotism and the U.S. naturally became popular, and Milton Bradley introduced the GAME OF STATES. Then in 1941, the company cut its game line from 410 to 150. CHUTES & LADDERS came out before the war’s end, and during the slow recovery after the war, Bradley introduced CANDYLAND, and Parker Bros. bought the rights to the English CLUEDO and brought out CLUE. A small company called the Production & Marketing Co. began manufacturing a cross-word game called SCRABBLE, which was soon to become the most popular word game in history and eventually change the course of the Selchow & Righter Co.
THE BOX THAT CHANGED THE INDUSTRY
It wasn’t a game box that changed the course of the American game industry, it was “the box” called television. Television had two direct effects: it offered a form of leisure activity that took time away from other pastimes, such as playing games, and it allowed advertisers to reach a mass market. But perhaps more importantly, television affected the family, hastened our loss of innocence, and changed the way we lived.
Only the larger companies could afford to advertise on television, which widened the gap between the giants in the industry and the small manufacturers. Also, the advertisers could pander to children; a lack of regulations initially meant there were no restrictions on the methods used to sell to children, and youngsters were urging parents to buy games the parents knew nothing about. The “bandwagon” approach (“all kids have one, so should you”) was prevalent.
Television gave new meaning also to the concept of licensing. During the ’50s, many game companies, especially Milton Bradley, Lowell, and Transogram, began to acquire more and more licenses to television shows. Businesses that once hoped to sell a game that would be a staple in the line for decades were now making products that would be obsolete as soon as the program on which they were based was no longer on the air. More attention was given to the name and character on the box than to the product inside.
THE CHAIN STORE
The distribution of games changed as well, as a result of the growth in affluence during the 1950s. Shopping malls provided convenient one-stop shopping, and toy chains offered discounted products. The small game store owner found it more difficult to compete, and by the 1990s many had gone out of business. Independent inventors and small manufacturers couldn’t get their games into the large chains unless they backed the product with TV advertising.
THE END OF AN ERA
Parker Bros. remained a giant in the industry throughout the beginning of the television era. In 1968, Parker Brothers was bought by General Mills. The company changed hands a couple of times until it was purchased by Hasbro in 1991. Hasbro, having ownership of the two largest game companies in the U. S., Parker and Milton Bradley, decided to consolidate and closed the Parker Brothers factory in Salem in 1991, ending a Parker legacy that had begun in that area 108 years before.
Classic Parker Brothers games include BOGGLE, CHIVALRY, FLINCH, THE MAD MAGAZINE GAME, MASTERPIECE, MILLE BOURNE (based on the game of TOURING acquired by Parker), OUIJA (an 1890s fortune-telling device acquired in 1966), PAYDAY, PENTE (an ancient game revived in 1977 and purchased by Parker in 1984), RISK, and SORRY, a PARCHEESI-variant acquired from England.
The Milton Bradley story is a great American success story. In addition to its early successes and its television games, Milton Bradley introduced many other games which have become classics, including: BATTLESHIP, CONCENTRATION, CONNECT FOUR, HANGMAN, THE GAME OF INDIA, THE GAME OF LIFE, MOUSETRAP, OPERATION, PASSWORD, RACKO, SIMON, STRATEGO, TWISTER, and YAHTZEE (which it acquired when it bought the E.S. Lowe Company).
In 1984, the Milton Bradley Company was bought by Hasbro, ending 124 years of family ownership; the company continues to manufacture games at its Springfield plant.
For Selchow & Righter, the rush to meet the increasing demand for SCRABBLE forced the company to cut back on the development of other products; later, the company focused its attention on SCRABBLE variants and other word games. In the early 1980s, S&R acquired TRIVIAL PURSUIT–a game that became one of the best sellers of the century.
After being in business 119 years, (making it the oldest family-owned game company in the United States after Hasbro’s takeover of Bradley), Selchow & Righter was sold to Coleco in 1986. A short time later, Coleco went bankrupt and was bought by Hasbro; and the Selchow & Righter name came to an end.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN GAMES
Ours is a new society. We have more leisure time, but increasingly more things to fill that time with. Family life is very different now compared with family life during the beginning of the American game industry: more children grow up with fewer siblings and only one parent, children leave home earlier, and grandparents less often live in the same household with their grandchildren; more time is spent with television and video games and less time with books and family activity. In an era of knowledge, wealth, and sophistication, table games are seen more as playthings for children than as leisure activity for families and adults (though the spate of parlor games beginning with TRIVIAL PURSUIT may have changed this, if only temporarily).
The companies that made games have changed too. Selchow & Righter, Coleco, Ideal, Lowell, Transogram, and other game companies are gone. Mattel, though very active in the toy industry, closed its game division in the late 1980s. Hasbro owns Milton Bradley, Parker, and Selchow & Righter, among other companies, which means it also owns PARCHEESI, MONOPOLY, SCRABBLE and a number of other famous titles. Though Hasbro now controls the bulk of non-electronic game manufacturing in the United States, many other companies still play a vital role in the industry. Pressman Toy Company, in business since 1921, is now the oldest family-owned game company in the U.S. Cadaco, Cardinal, Gabriel and Western Publishing are still active after many years in business. Newer companies such as International Games and Talicor have been making increasing contributions to the market.
As computer and video games take over a larger share of the game market, companies are having a more difficult time placing board and card games. Major companies are looking for “gimmicks,” and are moving toward producing more three-dimensional games, such as in the Skill & Action category. New, small companies, including inventors working independently out of their homes, seem to be taking over the marketing of traditional board and card games. The success rate for these independents is not high, however.
With so much change in the game industry since 1980, and with a recession having effected all industry in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it is difficult to predict what will happen by the turn-of-the-century. The internet has added a new dimension to game playing, and has started to effect the way games are sold.
It can be expected that board games and card games will always be around, but more of them will probably come from the smaller companies and independent inventors. Rather than spend time and money trying to succeed with a traditional game product, the larger companies will wait until an independent’s product has proven itself on the market, and then purchase it. Because the small company devotes more time to one product and needs a higher quality product to compete, the end result may be a higher caliber of American board games and card games on the market. And because the smaller companies usually produce a smaller run of a particular title, it might mean more interesting collectible games in the new century than what’s likely to emerge from the over-produced, mass-marketed, heavily licensed products of the ‘90s.
© 1997, 2002 Bruce Whitehill. All Rights Reserved.
Published in “Toy Shop” October 1997.
