I guess I always assumed that the Milton Bradley sung about on TV in commercials for games that I saw on TV as a youth was either the last two names of the men who invented the games (Bob Milton and Eddie Bradley), or the Anglicized name of a fat immigrant who hit it big in the board game racket (Milton Bradzinkovitz). But in fact Milton Bradley was a man from Massachusetts who iived in the mid-nineteenth century (bird/death dates–1836-1911) who pretty much invented, or at least perfected, the portable game starting with “The Checkered Game Of Life” in 1860. It was during the Civil War that Bradley developed a slew of games to sell for reduced prices to soldiers–he also took previously highbrow games like Chess and Backgammon and reduced them to portable-sized versions for soldiers, thus bringing the games to American mass audiences. I urge you to read his incredibly interesting Wikipedia entry for a more in-depth view of this curious figure whose name has long outlived him, even if we have no idea who the man behind the name actually was. Above I’ve posted a 1960s ad for ‘Twister’, a game which, had he still been alive, the one-hundred-and-thirty year old gamesman would most certainly not approved of. Below are ads for three more mid-century games, all  duds. ‘Racko’, a card game that didn’t exactly inspire World Tournaments, ‘Easy Money’–a straight-up Monopoly ripoff, and a very creepy game for pre-pubescent girls called ‘Mystery Date’, None would  have met with the approval of the company’s founder and I hate to think of what his reaction would be to ‘Mr. Bucket’, ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’ and ‘Broadsides and Boarding Parties’. Give me a good game of Gin Rummy any day…