1950s Board Games
1950s Board Games
Let’s Take a Look at the Most Popular ‘50s Board Games—How Many Do You Remember?
Boom Again is a new pop culture game that tests your trivia knowledge about the music, movies, fun and fads of the Baby Boom era—including the 1950s. Here, we take a look at the most popular 1950s board games. Some of them disappeared along with poodle skirts, sock hops and cheap gasoline. Others have stood the test of time. Let’s see how many you know.
A Sweet Little Game Called Candy Land
In Candy Land, players race along a colorful winding path to try to be the first to get to the end. You might remember some of the sweets-themed stops along the way, like a peppermint stick forest, lollypop woods and gumdrop mountains.
Since those days, Hasbro has added characters to the game board. Now players go in pursuit not just of a lollypop woods, but Princess Lolly of Lollypop Woods. There’s also a Lord Licorice, King Kandy, etc.
What’s the same? Little kids love playing Candy Land, and it’s said to still sell about a million copies every year.
Can You Build a Monopoly?
If you played Monopoly as a kid, most likely the game began even before a single roll of the dice because first, you had to battle it out to make sure you got the game token you liked best.
The version of the game from the late ‘50s and into the ‘60s that was probably in your home had 10 game tokens: a battleship, boot, cannon, horse and rider, iron, racecar, dog, thimble, top hat, and wheelbarrow.
It’s since replaced some of them with a Scottish terrier, penguin, cat, T-Rex and rubber duckie.
Next up in our trip down ‘50s board games memory lane…
We Still Scramble to Play Scrabble
The classic word game has been around since 1938, but it really took off in the 1950s, thanks to Macy’s president at the time being a fan. He insisted on carrying it all his stores.
Scrabble was invented by an architect. He actually calculated letter frequency on the front page of The New York Times to determine how many tiles there should be and how many points each letter she be worth. For example, “Q” is a letter that occurs least often in English text, so it should only get one tile and be awarded the most (10) points.
The game was originally named Lexico, then Criss-Cross Words. A friend suggested Scrabble, and the rest is game history.
Fun fact: When players use all seven of their Scrabble tiles to make a word, it’s called a bingo. Be sure to yell “bingo!” if you get one.
Peter Pan, a Game That Never Grew Up
A best-selling game of the early 1950s, the game Peter Pan was released in conjunction with the Disney movie. Players raced to get to Never Land and back with a spinner that guided the way. As much fun as kids might have had playing with characters including Peter Pan, Wendy Darling, John Darling, and Michael Darling, the game itself is now in “never land.”
Another one of those‘50s board games you might remember, but can’t currently find on toy store shelves…
Watch Out for the Traffic Jam
In the game Traffic Jam, players “drove” around the board trying to get to their destination first, while avoiding pesky traffic jams.
The box featured a stressed-out man in a business suit driving a red convertible encountering railroad tracks, one-way streets, dead ends and roadway obstacles.
Yahtzee!
As the story goes, Yahtzee was invented by a Canadian couple. They introduced the dice game as an activity to play with friends aboard their yacht—hence, the name Yahtzee.
It was a hit when released in the 1950s, and it’s still popular today. Hasbro, which now owns the game, estimates that around 50 million sets are sold each year.
Fun fact: Some Yahtzee fans did a bit of number crunching and calculated that there is a 1 in 1,296 chance of rolling a single-throw Yahtzee—that’s five dice all landing on the same number in one throw.
Are You Ready to Take a Risk?
Game lovers have been vying for world domination ever since the game Risk came out in the U.S. in 1959.
Over the years, Parker Brothers has released many versions featuring worlds as diverse as Middle-earth from Lord of the Rings to Rick and Morty’s world to Call of Duty Zombies.
In 2016, the original game you knew from back in the day got a bit of a polish—including lavish new illustrations on the gameboard, and more elaborate detailing on the game’s troops, cavalry and artillery figures.
Maybe it’s time to dig out some of those 1950s board games and have some fun all over again!
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