Though the game had been around since 1904 when Elizabeth Magie Philips created The Landlord's Game, the version that the Parker Brothers were approached with was the one Charles Darrow based on Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was during the later Depression years, in 1935, that Monopoly was launched. During the economic recovery of the “roaring twenties” they joined the game world in embracing Mah Jongg, but didn't have a corner on that market. 8įollowing the financial panic of 1907, Parker Brothers narrowed their focus to wood jigsaw puzzles, which they continued through World War I and into the 1920s, helping to create that popular fad. It became their top grossing game at that time and would hold that status until Monopoly was introduced. 7 Rook was invented by George, manufactured by Parker Brothers, but sold under the Rook Card Co. Pit, their first million-seller, was bought from Edgar Cayce in 1903 and was based on the popular Frank Norris trading book, The Pit, about the Chicago trading floor. The card games that Parker Brothers launched in the beginning of the new century began with Flinch in 1902, Pit in 1904, and Rook in 1906. Parker Brothers acquired the rights to use the Ping-Pong name in America as they introduced this new sport. The new celluloid ball made ping and pong sounds and thus the game was so renamed. This was before the celluloid ball was invented in 1900, which was a vast improvement over the rubber or cork balls. Earlier, in their catalog, they had advertised a board game entitled Table Tennis. One exception to this was their introduction of the British Ping-Pong craze to America in 1902. Game sets were often made of large wood boards or cases accompanied by “bone dice, metal tokens, and figural wooden playing pieces turned on a lathe.” 6Īs the major game manufacturers in America began to scale back their elaborate game sets in the early 1900s, Parker Brothers began focusing on card games. By this time, board games could be mass-produced with a lithographic printing process that no longer needed to be hand colored. This catalog included a reissue of an Ives board game, the Mansion of Happiness, which was promoted as the first American board game. In the 1880s, Parker Brothers was one of the first American game companies to advertise in magazines. They also produced a catalog of their family parlor games in 1894. Parker Brothers would remain a family-owned and managed business for another 80 years until 1968. Ten years later their older brother Edward would join the company as well. George was joined by his brother Charles in 1888 to create Parker Brothers, based in their hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. During this time he also launched his own game, Chivalry, which was later renamed Camelot. By 1887 he had obtained the rights to the full Ives line. Ives, one of the oldest manufacturers of games at the time. 5Īs he was inventing games, George was also selling games manufactured by W & S.B. 4 Some other examples were the board games Klondike, about the Alaskan Gold Rush, and the War in Cuba, concerning the Spanish-American War. 3 Banking was one such game as it was released just as America had ended a post Civil War depression and was beginning a period of more prosperous economic times. His goal was to keep people informed about their times as they were entertained. Most of his early games were designed to educate and entertain. Parker Company to market his first game, Banking, a finance game that he had modified from a morality card game called Everlasting. In 1883, at the age of sixteen, George founded the George S. 1 His own passion for inventing games was expanded upon by strategic acquisitions of other inventors’ products and his 12 tenets for running a good business - his own rules for the “game” of a successful corporation. Parker, believing that strategy and amusement games could be enjoyed by adults as well as children, developed the classic games Monopoly, Flinch, Pit, Rook, Boggle, Risk, and Sorry.
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