THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA Read Online Free PDF Page B

gamesters may enjoy bargaining for Boardwalk and Park Place. During the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, scene of the Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate,” six Monopoly sets were placed on display. By the time the exhibit was ended, all of the sets had been stolen.
    The true mystery of Monopoly lies in its continued popularity. Why should a game that defies the major criteria for a good family game maintain its position as “number one”?
    Initially, of course, the timing for introducing Monopoly was perfect. People out of work loved playing tycoon, and men who were homeless needed to build dream castles.
    But the game has far outlived its period, and it shows no signs of dwindling in appeal. Perhaps the reason for Monopoly’s long-term success is simply that the game is just great fun. It provides opportunities for fantasized speculation, acceptable miserliness, and interpersonal conflict. Furthermore, Monopoly maintains an unusual balance between luck and freedom of judgment.
    Could a hit like Monopoly ever happen again? That is the question that impels would-be millionaires in American towns, cities, and rural districts to keep trying, year after year, to come up with the game that will make them secure for life.
    The odds are pretty small. Darrow himself tried to repeat his success a few years later with Bulls and Bears, a stock-market game. It went nowhere.
    With the competition of company inventors and professional freelancers to consider, a conservative estimate of the odds confronting today’s amateurs might be about five thousand to one. Yet the pot of gold at rainbow’s end is too alluring to ignore.
    Besides, it stands to reason that somebody has to come up with another Monopoly someday—and Parker Brothers is patiently waiting for it to happen. The company welcomes the thousands of ideas submitted each year; each suggested game is reviewed and many are played before the company reaches a decision.
    For one of these days, Parker hopes to need those laundry baskets again.

4   A Fortune in a Matchbox
    What city produces more cars than any other in the whole world?
    If you think that Detroit is the answer, you’re wrong. There’s one factory in eastern London that makes the Michigan setup look like the Little League.
    In an average week, Lesney Products & Co. Ltd. turns out close to five and one half million cars, trailers, trucks, buses, and other vehicles. There’s just one catch: you could pick up any three Lesney autos in the palm of your hand and have room left over for half a dozen paper clips and a wad of bubble gum.
    The output of this remarkable British company is the successful “Matchbox” series of miniature toy vehicles, each one small enough to be packed into an empty wooden-match carton.
    Throughout the ages, toy vehicles have been popular as children’s playthings; in fact, a history of transportation could probably be written just by studying the toys of other eras. Nowadays, there are more toy cars and trucks than any other kind of toy—one trade magazine estimates that there are twice as many vehicular toys as any other plaything. An examination of the available products shows an immense range of quality and type, all the way from poorly made “stocking stuffers” with dangerously sharp metal edges, chiefly imported from the Orient, on up to precision-engineered, safety-tested, accurate scale models from companies like Tonka and Corgi.
    But who would ever want a dinky little toy car like the ones Lesney makes? “Fits in a matchbox?” retailers asked when they first saw the line back in the nineteen-fifties. “Why, they’re nothing but trinkets!”
    The public disagreed. Literally hundreds of millions of “Matchbox” toys have been sold since their first introduction, and demand for them is now so widespread that they can be found in stores in 132 countries, making “Matchbox” the most widely distributed toy in the entire world.
    The amazing thing about