Purchased by Hasbro in 1991; merged with Milton Bradley to be reincorporated as "Hasbro Games" (now Hasbro Gaming) in 1998. Remained as a brand until 2009
Parker Brothers (known by Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883.[1] Among its products were Monopoly, Clue (licensed from the British publisher and known as Cluedo outside of North America), Sorry!, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Ouija, Aggravation, Bop It, Scrabble (under a joint partnership with Milton Bradley in the United States and Canada), and Probe. The trade name became defunct with former products being marketed under the "Hasbro Gaming" label with the logo shown on Monopoly games.
Parker Brothers was founded by George Swinnerton Parker.[2] Parker's philosophy deviated from the prevalent theme of board game design; he believed that games should be played for enjoyment and did not need to emphasize morals and values. He created his first game, called Banking, in 1883 when he was 16.[3]Banking is a game in which players borrow money from the bank and try to generate wealth by guessing how well they could do. The game includes 160 cards which foretell their failure or success. The game was so popular among family and friends that his brother, Charles Parker, urged him to publish it. George approached two Boston publishers with the idea, but was unsuccessful. Not discouraged, he spent $40 to publish 500 sets of Banking.[3] He eventually sold all but twelve copies, making a profit of $100.
Parker founded his game company, initially called the George S. Parker Company, in his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts in 1883.[4] When George's brother Charles joined the business in 1888, the company's name was changed to its more familiar form. In 1898 a third brother, Edward H. Parker, joined the company. For many years, George designed most of the games himself, and wrote all the rules. Many games were based on important events of the day: Klondike was based on the Klondike Gold Rush, and War in Cuba was based on the impending Spanish–American War.[5]
The game industry was growing, and the company was becoming very profitable. In 1906, Parker Brothers published the game Rook and it became the bestselling game in the country.[5] During the Great Depression, a time when many companies went out of business, Parker Brothers released a new board game called Monopoly. Although the company had originally rejected the game in 1934, they decided to publish it the next year.[6] It was a success, and the company had difficulty keeping up with demand. The company continued to grow throughout the next several decades, producing games including Cluedo (released as Clue in North America), Risk, and Sorry![5]
Parker Brothers marketed its first jigsaw puzzle in 1887. Parker also produced children's puzzles, as well as the Climax, Jig-A-Jig, Jig Wood, and Paramount lines. According to Jigsaw Puzzles: An Illustrated History and Price Guide, by Anne D. Williams, Parker Bros. closed the Pastime line in the 1950s and their die-cut puzzles were phased out in the late 1970s.[7]
Even after George Parker's death, the company remained family-owned until 1968 when General Mills purchased the company.[2] After this, Parker Brothers produced the first Nerf ball.[5] In the UK during the 1970s, Parker Brothers was the games division of Palitoy (also a General Mills company), and produced a variety of releases such as Escape from Colditz.[citation needed] In 1977, the company built its headquarters in Beverly, Massachusetts.[8]
The company began to produce electronic versions of their popular board games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At this time, the company ventured into the toy market with the electronic action figure, Rom the Spaceknight, in 1979. Although the toy proved a failure, the licensed comic book published by Marvel Comics ran for years after the toy was discontinued. They also produced video games for various systems during the early 1980s, with home ports of many popular arcade games such as Konami's Frogger, Nintendo's Popeye, Gottlieb games such as Q*bert and Reactor, and the first video games based on the Star Wars films such as The Empire Strikes Back, Jedi Arena, Death Star Battle, and more.
In 1985, General Mills merged the company with their subsidiary Kenner; this new company, Kenner Parker Toys Inc., was acquired by Tonka in 1987.[12] In 1988, Parker Brothers struck a deal with Martindale/Gilden Productions to develop television game shows, such as Boggle.[13]
Tonka, including Parker Brothers, was bought in 1991 for about $516million by Hasbro which also owned the Milton Bradley Company.[14] Following the acquisition, Parker Brothers continued to have its corporate offices in Beverly, but production of the games were moved to Milton Bradley's headquarters in East Longmeadow.[15] In 1998, Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley were consolidated at the new Hasbro Games campus (based in the former address of Parker Brothers' headquarters) to merge together and form Hasbro Games.[16] Milton Bradley and Parker Bros. subsequently turned into two separate brands of Hasbro before being retired in 2009 in favor of the Hasbro brand.
Cluedo, known as Clue in North America, is a murder mystery game for three to six players that was devised in 1943 by British board game designer Anthony E. Pratt. The game was first manufactured by Waddingtons in the United Kingdom in 1949. Since then, it has been relaunched and updated several times, and it is currently owned and published by the American game and toy company Hasbro.
Hasbro, Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company incorporated and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Hasbro owns the trademarks and products of Kenner, Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, and Wizards of the Coast, among others. As of August 2020, over 81.5% of its shares were held by large financial institutions.
Boggle is a word game in which players try to find as many words as they can from a grid of lettered dice, within a set time limit. It was invented by Allan Turoff and originally distributed by Parker Brothers.
Milton Bradley Company or simply Milton Bradley (MB) was an American manufacturer established by Milton Bradley (1836-1911) in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1860. In 1920, it absorbed the game production of McLoughlin Brothers, formerly the largest game manufacturer in the United States. It was acquired by Hasbro in 1984.
Simon is an electronic game of short-term memory skill invented by Ralph H. Baer and Howard J. Morrison, working for toy design firm Marvin Glass and Associates, with software programming by Lenny Cope. The device creates a series of tones and lights and requires a user to repeat the sequence. If the user succeeds, the series becomes progressively longer and more complex. Once the user fails or the time limit runs out, the game is over. The original version was manufactured and distributed by Milton Bradley and later by Hasbro after it took over Milton Bradley. Much of the assembly language code was written by Charles Kapps, who taught computer science at Temple University and also wrote one of the first books on the theory of computer programming. Simon was launched in 1978 at Studio 54 in New York City and was an immediate success, becoming a pop culture symbol of the 1970s and 1980s.
McLoughlin Bros., Inc. was a New York manufacturing company active between 1858 and 1920. As a publisher itself, the company was a pioneer in color printing technologies in children's books. The company specialized in retellings or bowdlerizations of classic stories for children.
Waddingtons was a British manufacturer of card and board games. The company was founded by John Waddington of Leeds, England and the manager, actor and playwright Wilson Barrett, under the name Waddingtons Limited. The name was changed in 1905 to John Waddington Limited, then Waddington's House of Games, then Waddington Games, and finally just Waddingtons.
The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation. A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the modern version of Monopoly sold by Parker Brothers and its related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to design and evolution.
Easy Money or The Game of Easy Money was a board game introduced by Milton Bradley Company in 1935. Like Monopoly, the game is based on The Landlord's Game in the movement of pieces around the board, the use of cards, properties that can be purchased, and houses that can be established on them.
Milton Bradley was an American business magnate, game pioneer and publisher, credited by many with launching the board game industry, with his eponymous enterprise, which was purchased by Hasbro in 1984, and folded in 1998.
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, Lois Elaine, who did not always enjoy defeat.
Hasbro Family Game Night is a series of video games that adapt board games manufactured by Hasbro.
Battleship/Connect Four/Sorry!/Trouble is a compilation video game developed by British studio Gravity-I and published by DSI Games. It was released for Nintendo DS in North America on August 17, 2006 and is the fifth of six compilation video games of Hasbro board games developed by Gravity-I and released on Nintendo handhelds. The game contains versions of four board games from Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, which are both Hasbro brands. A sequel, titled Clue/Mouse Trap/Perfection/Aggravation, was released the following year, adapting four more Hasbro board games in a single cartridge: Clue, Mouse Trap, Perfection and Aggravation.
George Swinnerton Parker was an American game designer and businessman who founded Geo. S. Parker Co. and Parker Brothers.
An Amerigame, short for American-style board game, is a loose category of tabletop game that generally features a prominent theme, encourages direct conflict between players, and has a significant degree of luck. It is distinguished from a Eurogame, or German-style board game, in that American-style games often have longer playtimes and mechanics designed to suit the theme. Games of this genre are sometimes, if pejoratively, nicknamed Ameritrash.
Trump: The Game is a board game named after Donald Trump. Milton Bradley Company initially released the game in 1989, but it sold poorly, with only 800,000 copies sold out of an expected two million. Parker Brothers re-released Trump: The Game in 2004 following the success of Trump's reality television series, The Apprentice, from earlier that year. Trump: The Game received poor reviews from critics and the public audience.
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.
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