The Game Industry Following the Great Depression of 1929
by Bruce Whitehill
With the collapse of the stock market in the United States in 1929 came the Great Depression. Businesses failed, and unemployed workers waited on bread lines for food. Two commercial diversions remained within reach because of the low costs involved: going to movies and buying games. Jig-saw puzzles became popular. Backgammon was revived. As the fad of miniature golf grew in 1930 (it started in Tennessee in 1927), so did the number of table golf games that reached the market. That same year, United Airlines offered the first in-flight stewardess service, and Pan American’s “China Clipper” provided the first passenger flights across the Pacific, resulting in cheerful travelers in the air and at the tables that sported the home games. The opening of the Empire State Building (1932), then the world’s highest building, allowed another identifiable icon to grace gameboards and box covers. The National Recovery Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority were established to help fight the economic inertia, and “NRA” and “TVA” (and later the “WPA,” Works Progress Administration) became initials on a number of gameboards. The Century of Progress, an international exposition in Chicago from 1933-34, hinted at economic recovery and became a new theme for games.
The Depression wasn’t felt by the game industry until around 1932. Games of high finance became popular, and, in 1934, Parker Bros. brokered a deal to produce a folk game called “Monopoly.”
Most firms weathered the difficult period of the Depression, 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 the classroom into a game with GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS (1938), a question-and-answer game that has served an educational and entertainment value for children since then.
The U.S. kept a close watch on Europe as that continent readied itself for war. Between the two world wars, new companies had emerged, such as Alderman-Fairchild, Cadaco-Ellis, Einson-Freeman, Pressman, Rosebud, Russell, Stoll & Edwards, Whitman, and Wilder. Transogram managed a transition from playsets to games, and Sam’l Gabriel Sons & Co. and Wolverine also changed from selling other products to producing games.
