Operation board game was originally created by a student to search for water in Death Valley, but was reinvented by Milton Bradley and has since grossed $40 million in sales. Other board games with unique origins include Chutes & Ladders and Jenga.
Anyone who has ever picked up the tweezers to remove the “bread basket” or “wish bone” from the patient in the Operation board game knows the unnerving thrill of accidentally touching the metal rim and setting off the buzzer.
What if instead your goal was to sink a probe into the ground to look for water? Maybe not as suspenseful. The search for water was the initial goal of the board game created by University of Illinois student John Spinello in 1964. The original version of the game was known as Death Valley and focused on a man lost in the desert, desperate looking for ways to survive. poking holes in things and draining what he could. Spinello sold the rights to Chicago-based toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates for $500 USD — and the promise of work that never materialized.
Death Valley might have been lost in the sands of time if Mel Taft and his team at Milton Bradley hadn’t seen its potential and reinvented it as the game we all know and love to be electrocuted. Since its release in 1965, Operation has grossed an estimated $40 million dollars in sales, as generation after generation try their luck at removing the plastic ailments within Cavity Sam.
Thinking outside the box:
Chutes & Ladders was invented by a teacher who wanted to create a fun activity for children confined to a hospital polio ward.
The first non-coffee item sold by Starbucks was the Cranium board game; it later became the first board game sold on Amazon and by Barnes & Noble.
According to Hasbro, Robert Grebler’s 40-story Jenga tower, built in 1985, is the tallest ever built.
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