Industry | Board & card games |
---|---|
Founded | 19th century (as a printing firm), 1922 (gaming company) |
Defunct | 1994 |
Fate | Acquired |
Successor | |
Headquarters | Leeds & London |
Products | Monopoly Cluedo Waddingtons Christmas Jigsaws Playing cards |
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 company was established as a printing business, and at first 'practically all its business related to the theatre'. [1] It entered into game production in 1922, due to a boom in demand for playing cards around World War I. [2] Waddingtons subsequently sold both original games (especially tie-ins for UK television programmes) and games licensed from other publishers.
Waddingtons became the UK publisher of the US Parker Brothers' Monopoly, while Parker licensed Waddingtons' Cluedo. [2] In 1941, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence section 9 (MI9) had the company create a special edition of Monopoly for World War II prisoners of war held by the Germans. [3] Hidden inside these games were maps, compasses, real money and other objects useful for escaping. They were distributed to prisoners by fake charitable organisations. [4]
Victor Watson, the grandson of Victor Hugo Watson was its chairman from 1977 to 1993. [5] [6] While well known for games, they never provided more than 15% of profit; Victor continued his father Norman's emphasis on improving packaging technology, such as folding cartons and microwave trays. From the 1970s, the popularity of video games hurt game sales, and after Victor's retirement, [7] the company was bought by Hasbro in 1994. [8]
Beginning in 1994, Christmas-themed jigsaw puzzles were released annually until 2007. The first twelve in the series depicted a scene from a Victorian-era Christmas. The final puzzle depicted a scene from the fairy tale Cinderella. The small number of puzzles, combined with them being limited editions, has made these puzzles highly collectable. [9] Further jigsaws have been produced since 2010 by a new company, using the same brand name. [9]
Among the games published by Waddingtons were:
Monopoly is a multiplayer economics-themed board game. In the game, players roll two dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties and developing them with houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents and aim to drive them into bankruptcy. Money can also be gained or lost through Chance and Community Chest cards and tax squares. Players receive a salary every time they pass "Go" and can end up in jail, from which they cannot move until they have met one of three conditions. House rules, hundreds of different editions, many spin-offs, and related media exist.
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.
Milton Bradley Company or simply Milton Bradley (MB) was an American board game 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, and merged with their subsidiary Parker Brothers in 1998. The brand name continued to be used by Hasbro until 2009.
Parker Brothers 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. Among its products were Monopoly, Clue, Sorry!, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Ouija, Aggravation, Bop It, Scrabble, and Probe. The trade name became defunct with former products being marketed under the "Hasbro Gaming" label, with the logo shown on Monopoly games.
Ravensburger AG is a German game, puzzle and toy company, publishing house, and market leader in the jigsaw puzzle market.
Hong Kong Monopoly is an edition of the popular board game Monopoly. It features properties, railroads and utilities located in Hong Kong, in place of those from the original game.
Rachel Tanya Lowe MBE is a British serial entrepreneur and board games developer. She is best known for developing the Destination series of games, including editions for Toy Story, the London 2012 Olympic Games and Downton Abbey.
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 already existed much like the modern version of Monopoly that has been sold by Parker Brothers and 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 its design and evolution.
Jedko Games is an Australian importer/wholesaler of games, jigsaws, playing cards, wooden toys, board games, traditional games and puzzles. It was originally a publisher of original games and Australian editions of overseas wargames.
Destination is a brand of roll-and-move board games first published in 2004. In the original taxi-themed version, players compete as taxi drivers to acquire play money by moving from destination to destination across the board using dice. The game combines chance from rolling dice and drawing chance cards with a degree of strategic decision-making in planning routes and managing resource cards.
Formula 1 is a motor racing themed board game designed by John Howarth and Trevor Jones and originally published by Waddingtons of Leeds, United Kingdom in 1962.
Anthony Ernest Pratt was the inventor of the English detective-themed board game Cluedo, currently owned and marketed by American entertainment company Hasbro.
Gibsons Games (Gibsons) is an independent, family-owned UK board game and jigsaw puzzle company and one of the oldest in the United Kingdom. Gibsons is the trading name of H. P. Gibson & Sons Ltd. The fourth generation of the Gibsons family now runs the company. The company is headquartered in Sutton, England.
Lexicon is a word game using a dedicated deck of cards for 2 to 4 players published as a shedding card game.
Automonopoli, also known as Go to Jail, is an unauthorised computer version of the boardgame Monopoly, released in June 1983 by Automata UK for the ZX Spectrum. Although other two-player Monopoly computer programs already existed, the developer advertised that their Automonopoli was the first with an artificial intelligence strong enough to compete against and defeat human players.
Victor Hugo Watson was a British businessman and philanthropist. He served as the Chairman of Waddingtons from 1977 to 1993. Waddingtons employed over 3,000 people, mainly in Leeds, and were involved in printing, packaging, games and playing cards. He was sometimes known as "Mr Monopoly".
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.