Cooties is a fictitious childhood disease, commonly represented as childlore. It is used in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines as a rejection term and an infection tag game (such as Humans vs. Zombies). It is similar to the British 'dreaded lurgi', and to terms used in the Nordic countries, in Italy, India and Iraq. [1] A child is said to "catch" cooties through close contact with an "infected" person or from an opposite-sex child of a similar age.
The word is thought to originate from the Austronesian language family, in which the Philippine, Malaysian-Indonesian, and Māori [2] languages have the word kuto or kutu for a parasitic biting insect. [3] However, it is equally likely the name originated from "cuties", a cynical reference to the same. The earliest recorded uses of the term in English are by British soldiers during the First World War to refer to lice that proliferated in battlefield trenches. [4] [5]
A hand-held game, the Cootie Game, was made by the Irvin-Smith Company of Chicago in 1915; it involved tilting capsules (the cooties) into a trap over a background illustration depicting a battlefield. [6] Other cootie games followed, all involving some form of "bug" or "cootie", [6] until The Game of Cootie was launched in 1948 by Schaper Toys. [7] This game was very successful, becoming an icon; [8] in 2003, the Toy Industry Association included it on its "Century of Toys List" of the 100 most memorable and most creative toys of the 20th century.
In addition to the cooties games, the term cooties was popularised in America in the 1950s by military personnel coming back from service alongside the British in the South Pacific. [4] [9] Like the British 'dreaded lurgi', the cooties games developed during the early 1950s polio epidemic, and became associated with dirt and contagion. [1] [10]
The lice of the First World War trenches nicknamed "cooties" were also known as "arithmetic bugs" because "they added to our troubles, subtracted from our pleasures, divided our attention, and multiplied like hell." [11]
In Italy, children have the term la peste ("the plague"). [1] Cooties are known in Denmark as pigelus and drengelus and in Norway as jentelus and guttelus: each pair meaning literally "girl lice" and "boy lice". In Sweden they are known as tjejbaciller and killbaciller [12] (literally "girl/boy bacilli") and in Finland they are known as the tyttöbakteeri and poikabakteeri ("girl/boy bacteria"). In Serbia the game is known as šuga; the word means scabies.
A child is said to "catch" cooties through any form of bodily contact, proximity, or touching of an "infected" person or from a person of the opposite sex of the same age. Often the "infected" person is someone who is perceived as different, due to disability, shyness, being of the opposite sex, or having peculiar mannerisms. [13] The phrase is most commonly used by children in elementary school aged from four to ten; however, it may be used by older children in a sarcastic or playful way. [9]
In the United States, children sometimes "immunize" one another from cooties by administering a "cootie(s) shot". [4] Typically, one child administers the "shot", using an index finger to trace circles and dots on another child's forearm while reciting the rhyme, "Circle, circle, Dot, dot, – Now you've got the cootie shot!" In some variations, a child then says, "Circle, circle, Square, square, – Now you have it everywhere!" In this case, the child receives an immunization throughout their body. These variations may continue to a final shot where the child says, "Circle, circle, Knife, knife, – Now you've got it all your life!". A number of other variations exist.
A frisbee, also called a flying disc or simply a disc, is a gliding toy or sporting item that is generally made of injection-molded plastic and roughly 8 to 10 inches in diameter with a pronounced lip. It is used recreationally and competitively for throwing and catching, as in flying disc games. The shape of the disc is an airfoil in cross-section which allows it to fly by reducing the drag and increasing lift as it moves through the air, compared to a flat plate. Spinning the disc imparts a stabilizing gyroscopic force, allowing it to be both aimed with accuracy and thrown for distance.
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Don't Break the Ice is a children's tabletop game for two to four players ages 3 and up. First marketed by Schaper Toys in 1968, the game was sold to Hasbro subsidiary Milton Bradley in 1986. It is still in production, and special editions were released in conjunction with the films Frozen (2013) and Frozen II (2019).
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Schaper Toys, or W.H. Schaper Mfg. Co., Inc. as it was originally known, was a game and toy company founded in 1949 by William Herbert Schaper in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. "Herb" Schaper published a variety of games but was best known for having created the children's game, Cootie. In 1971, the company was sold to Kusan, Inc., and began operating as Schaper Toys, a subsidiary of Kusan, Inc. In 1986, Schaper Toys was acquired by Tyco Toys, which sold the rights to Cootie and three other of the company's best-known games to the Milton Bradley Company. These games are still being sold.
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The Game of Cootie is a children's dice rolling and set collection tabletop game for two to four players. The object is to be the first to build a three-dimensional bug-like object called a "cootie" from a variety of plastic body parts. Created by William Schaper in 1948 and based on the traditional dice game Beetle, the game was launched in 1949 and was commercially successful, with copies totalling more than one million in the first few years. In 1973, Cootie was acquired by Tyco Toys, and, in 1986, by Hasbro subsidiary Milton Bradley. The game was given a new look and continued to enjoy commercial success. Several companies published cootie games in the first half of the twentieth century, but only Schaper's featured a free-standing, three-dimensional cootie. In 2003, Cootie was named to the Toy Industry Association's "Century of Toys List".
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