Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, better known as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question they are asked from a card. Each correct answer allows the player's turn to continue; a correct answer on one of the six "category headquarters" spaces earns a plastic wedge which is slotted into the answerer's playing piece. The object of the game is to collect all six wedges from each "category headquarters" space, and then return to the center "hub" space to answer a question in a category selected by the other players.
A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction–type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal.
Connect Four is a game in which the players choose a color and then take turns dropping colored tokens into a six-row, seven-column vertically suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the lowest available space within the column. The objective of the game is to be the first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one's own tokens. It is therefore a type of m,n,k-game with restricted piece placement. Connect Four is a solved game. The first player can always win by playing the right moves.
A mousetrap is a specialized type of animal trap designed primarily to catch and, usually, kill mice. Mousetraps are usually set in an indoor location where there is a suspected infestation of rodents. Larger traps are designed to catch other species of animals, such as rats, squirrels, and other small rodents.
The Incredible Machine (TIM) is a series of video games in which players create a series of Rube Goldberg devices. They were originally designed and coded by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnell, the now-defunct Jeff Tunnell Productions, and published by Dynamix; the 1993 through 1995 versions had the same development team, but the later 2000–2001 games have different designers. All versions were published by Sierra Entertainment. The entire series and intellectual property were acquired by Jeff Tunnell-founded PushButton Labs in October 2009. PushButton Labs was later acquired by Playdom, itself a division of Disney Interactive, so as of now the rights are held by The Walt Disney Company.
Mouse Trap is a maze video game developed by Exidy and released in arcades in 1981. It is similar to Pac-Man, with the main character replaced by a mouse, the dots with cheese, the ghosts with cats, and the energizers with bones. After collecting a bone, pressing a button turns the mouse into a dog for a brief period of time. Color-coded doors in the maze can be toggled by pressing a button of the same color. A hawk periodically flies across the maze, unrestricted by walls.
HeroQuest, is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the game itself was actually a game system, allowing the gamemaster to create dungeons of their own design using the provided game board, tiles, furnishings and figures. The game manual describes Morcar/Zargon as a former apprentice of Mentor, and the parchment text is read aloud from Mentor's perspective. Several expansions have been released, each adding new tiles, traps, artifacts, and monsters to the core system.
Hungry Hungry Hippos is a tabletop game made for 2–4 players, produced by Hasbro, under the brand of its subsidiary, Milton Bradley. The idea for the game was published in 1967 by toy inventor Fred Kroll and it was introduced in 1978. The objective is for each player to collect as many marbles as possible with their toy hippopotamus model. The game was, at one point, marketed under the "Elefun and Friends" banner, along with Elefun, Mouse Trap and Gator Golf.
Operation is a battery-operated game of physical skill that tests players' hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. The game's prototype was invented in 1964 by University of Illinois industrial-design student John Spinello, who sold his rights to renowned toy designer Marvin Glass for $500 and the promise of a job upon graduation, which was not fulfilled. Initially produced by Milton Bradley in 1965, Operation is currently produced by Hasbro, with an estimated franchise worth $40 million.
Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse is a 1996 video game and the second of five adventure games in the Freddi Fish series of games developed and published by Humongous Entertainment. It was released on iOS under the title Freddi Fish Haunted Schoolhouse Mystery and on Android with a shortened title Freddi Fish: Haunted Schoolhouse in 2014. It was also released on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in May 2024.
Marvin Glass and Associates (MGA) was a toy design and engineering firm based in Chicago. Marvin Glass (1914–1974) and his employees created some of the most successful toys and games of the twentieth century such as Mr. Machine, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, Lite Brite, Ants in the Pants, Mouse Trap, Operation, Simon, Body Language, and the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle.
The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is a contest in which students of all ages build Rube Goldberg machines to complete an everyday task in the style of American cartoonist Rube Goldberg. The contest is held internationally and, after the Covid-19 pandemic, digitally. Live regional contests and local and regional winners are eligible and invited to compete in the national contest.
Aggravation is a board game for up to four players and later versions for up to six players, whose object is to be the first player to have all four playing pieces reach the player's home section of the board. The game's name comes from the action of capturing an opponent's piece by landing on its space, which is known as "aggravating". The name was coined by one of the creators, Louis Elaine, who did not always enjoy defeat.
Crazy Machines is a puzzle video game created by German studio FAKT Software. Crazy Machines based many of its ideas on The Incredible Machine series of games. The player is given a set of mechanical components to construct a Rube Goldberg-style or Heath Robinson-style intricate machine to solve a goal and advance to the next puzzle in the game.
The Grape Escape is a board game released in 1992 by Parker Brothers and licensed by Rehtmeyer Inc. The game was intended to entertain younger audiences of 5+ years old. In 2010, Hasbro released a game called Smashed Potatoes with the same game play, but with potatoes instead of grapes. However, Smashed Potatoes was eventually discontinued.
Elefun is a 1993 children's game from Hasbro. Players use a net to catch butterflies from a plastic elephant's 1-metre-long (3.3 ft) trunk, a plastic chute through which the paper butterflies travel, propelled up by a motor in the elephant. The game was republished twice between 2003 and 2009, starting with the marketing under its "Elefun and Friends" name. This consists of Hungry Hungry Hippos, Mouse Trap, Chasing Cheeky, and Gator Golf.
Cluedo, known as Clue in North America, is a murder mystery-themed multimedia franchise started in 1949 with the manufacture of the Cluedo board game. The franchise has since expanded to film, television game shows, book series, computer games, board game spinoffs, a comic, a play, a musical, jigsaws, card games, and other media.
Souptoys Toybox, also known simply as Souptoys, is a physics-based sandbox video game and "desktop toy" program for the Microsoft Windows systems. It was developed by a group of friends known as the Soupboys, based in Western Australia. Initially made available for purchase sometime in early 2006, Souptoys was released as freeware on July 14 of the same year. A number of updates have been released that add new toys to the game, although the game's official website is no longer accessible.
