Review by Mike Gange

The Game Makers:
The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddley Winks to Trivial Pursuit
by Philip E. Orbanes
Harvard Business School Press, $ 47.95, 245 pages

In 1883, a 16-year old named George S. Parker, living with his widowed mother in Medford, Mass., somehow scraped together the then huge sum of $50, which he invested into the printing of a board game. That November, the entrepreneurial George, armed with his biggest suitcase stuffed full of his game Banking, took time away from school and started making sales calls on the department stores in and around Boston. By Christmas, Parker, still only in grade eleven, had doubled his investment. Shortly after, he and his mother moved to Salem, Mass., where George founded a games company. He persuaded his two older brothers to join his firm which he came to call the Parker Brothers.

Today, you would be hard pressed to find any household without at least some games from the venerable Parker’s Brothers collection of family entertainment. That collection of games ranges from old favorites such as Monopoly, Clue, Risk, and Sorry!, to newer titles such as Trivial Pursuit and Nerf.

The enlightening story behind the games company has been captured in the fast moving and well written book by Philip Orbanes called The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers from Tiddley Winks to Trivial Pursuit. Orbanes, a former senior vice president of Research and Development at Parker Brothers, presents a sympathetic picture of the firm that would become world leaders in cards, board games and puzzles. Orbanes reports how Parker Brothers scraped through some tough times, profited from War times and even made money during the Depression times. He also relates how eventually the family run company came to be acquired by an unlikely suitor named General Mills, producers of packaged foodstuffs such as Betty Crocker cake mixes and Cheerios breakfast cereal. Still later, Hasbro, the toy company most would associate with G.I. Joe, took over the well known firm.

Prior to radio, television and movies, "home entertainment" meant games the whole family could participate in. As George Parker either developed or licenced, and sold, a constant array of new games, the company catalogue soon included Tiddley Winks, Mah-Jong, Ping Pong and Backgammon. Although the company generally posted an increase in its year end profits, it was during the depression years that a game called Monopoly caught the imagination of the world and pushed the company into profits of a million dollars.

Orbanes writes. "During 1936, Parker Brothers marketed six different versions of the Monopoly game, ranging in price from $2 to $25 ($325 today!). This most expensive set came with a wood game board and a brass handled chest lined with trays that held the games components, including Bakelite houses and hotels and metal coins for added money. When the accountants closed the books on 1936, 1,810,000 copies of all editions had been sold and the firm had earned an unprecedented $1,000,000 profit."

Although Orbanes’ account of the Parker Brothers success is an important illumination of our common culture, in this book he is a little too nice to the people within the Parker Brothers firm. It seems rarely did anyone get fired, favored employees were regularly given bonuses and tips, and whole families would find long term employment within the company.

Still, according to Orbanes, by Valentines Day 1968, when General Mills bought out Parker Brothers, that initial $50 investment of George S. Parker had become worth $47.5 million.

Now that is gamesmanship!

Mike Gange teaches media studies and journalism at Fredericton High.