Toy Hall of Fame prepares to welcome new inductees

Which playthings deserve to be enshrined this year in the National Toy Hall of Fame?

The 12 finalists were announced on Sept. 21 by the hall of fame in Rochester, N.Y. The contenders are: bingo, Breyer Horses, Catan, Lite-Brite, Nerf Toys, Masters of the Universe, Phase 10, Pound Puppies, Rack-O, Spirograph, the piñata and the spinning top. 

“These 12 toys span the history of play,” said spokesperson Christopher Bensch. “The top is as old as civilization itself, and bingo has been played in some form for hundreds of years.”

 

Good choices. Surely, the spinning top and bingo deserve to join the 77 toys, games and playthings that are already in the hall of fame. 

Usually, the panel of judges picks three or four inductees each year. Winners will be announced Nov. 10, 2022. 

This group of finalists is less than stellar, in my opinion. After the spinning top and bingo, my next pick is Rack-O, a family card game for two to four players. Rack-O requires some thinking and strategizing. 

Rack-O was created by Frank Whitehead of McKeesport, Pa., an accountant with U.S. Steel. In 1937, he started inventing games as a hobby. Rack-O was his first commercial success. It was accepted in 1956 by the Milton Bradley Company of Springfield, Mass., the leader in the board game industry.

 

Whitehead was known to pack his games in a suitcase and make the 500-mile trip to Milton Bradley’s headquarters, reported Carol Waterloo Frazier of Trib Total Media in Tarentum, Pa. He would meet with Milton Bradley’s president James J. Shea Jr., and other executives. 

“There were no contracts, just handshakes,” said Whitehead’s daughter, Celia Whitehead-Horner. Whitehead’s heirs continue to receive royalties. 

At least two other card games invented by Whitehead were found on game store shelves for a time in the 1960s – Stump and Spoof. The latter was promoted as “Carol Burnett’s Card Game.” 

Today, Racko is distributed by Winning Moves Games and sold primarily through independent toy stores as well as the Barnes & Noble chain of bookstores. Rack-O tournaments are offered regularly at Iron Hand Brewing, a local brewpub in Mobile, Ala. 

Another kingpin from the world of games is Edwin S. Lowe of Brooklyn, N.Y. He didn’t invent bingo…he just made a better bingo card.

 

Lowe was a traveling toy salesman. One evening in 1929, he observed a carnival game named beano being played in Jacksonville, Ga., near the Ocmulgee River. The players used beans to mark their cards, and the winner would yell “beano.”

 

Lowe hired Columbia University mathematician Carl Leffler to increase the number of combinations that could be printed on the playing cards. Professor Leffler had invented 6,000 different combinations of numbers. 

When Lowe was introducing the game to friends, an excited winner had a brain burp and blurted out “bingo,” instead of “beano.” 

He immediately changed the name of the game, and bingo – the E.S. Lowe Company was in business.

 

Lowe later scored another hit with the mega-game Yahtzee. The story goes that in 1956, Lowe was invited by a wealthy Canadian couple to a party aboard their yacht. They had invented a dice game and wanted Lowe to produce a version that they could give away to friends. 

He obtained the rights to sell the game, and the couple got 1,000 free games to use as gifts. 

Lowe changed the game’s name from The Yacht Game to Yahtzee. Lowe would sell his entire company to Milton Bradley in 1973 for a cool $26 million.

 

That’s a double bingo and a triple Yahtzee.