John McCoy:
From around 1970 to 1980, the Salem, Massachusetts-based Parker
Brothers (now a brand of Hasbro) published games whose innovative
and fanciful designs drew inspiration from Pop Art, Op Art, and
Madison Avenue advertising. They had boxes, boards, and components
that reflected the most current techniques of printing and
plastics molding. They were witty, silly, and weird. The other
main players in American games at the time were Milton-Bradley,
whose art tended towards cartoony, corny, and flat designs, and
Ideal, whose games (like Mousetrap) were mostly showcases for
their novel plastic components.Parker Brothers design stood out for its style and sophistication,
and even as a young nerd I could see that it was special. In fact,
I believe they were my introduction, at the age of seven, to the
whole concept of graphic design. This isn’t to say that the games
were good in the sense of being fun or engaging to play; a lot
of them were re-skinned versions of the basic
race-around-the-board type that had been popular since the Uncle
Wiggly Game. But they looked amazing and they were different.
These games mostly sucked but they looked cool as shit. Lot of memories for me in this post.
