Steve Jobs once said, “we (at Apple Computers) have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. “ A pretty frank statement from a man who is today remembered as a true visionary, albeit one that made more than his share of enemies along the way. He was hardly the only person to make this observation. Picasso himself once said, “A good artist borrows. A great artist steals.” Maybe, but in the world of business people don’t tend to be so honest. There’s just too much money involved.

The man credited with inventing the game Monopoly is Charles Darrow and while yes, the game we know and love today was designed by him, he was none-the-less piggybacking off the fruits of others labor. In 1904 a woman named Elizabeth Magie was awarded a patent for a game she invented called The Landlords Game. The goal was to “obtain as much wealth as possible” and effectively put their opponents out of business. Yet the object of the game was hardly the only similarity to today’s well-known real estate trading game. Like Monopoly it was played on a board with forty spaces and twenty-two properties plus four railroads. Each had a start point where you collected a “salary” each time you crossed it. Each had a “jail” section and a “go to jail” square diagonally across on the top-right corner of the board. Deeds were distributed once a property was purchased and houses could be built on said property.

Clearly this was a forbearer of Monopoly though there was – at least in the mind of its inventor – a far greater purpose behind it. Magie was a harsh critic of free market capitalism and a staunch believer of economist Henry George and his “single tax” philosophy which theorized that all government could be funded by taxing nothing but property. It’s ironic that the very game that came to celebrate capitalism began as a sort of socialist tutorial but in the end people just found the game fun to play. Many also began to create their own versions of the game. One popular variation was called The Fascinating Game of Finance. This was the version that Ruth Hoskins, the Principal of a Quaker school in New Jersey was familiar with. She introduced the game to her fellow teachers and they eventually made their own version, this one with real-estate lots named for streets in nearby Atlantic City. This version of the game caught the attention of a real life Atlantic City hotel manager named Charles Todd and it was he who introduced it to a Germantown, Pennsylvania resident named Charles Darrow, an unemployed man with a gift for woodworking and illustration.

Having been unemployed for three years, Darrow began making his own version of the game he called Monopoly using an oilcloth to make a playing board which was originally circular and later rectangular. A jigsaw was used to make little wooden houses and hotels. Most significantly though were his color-coded properties and illustrations such as the little railroad silhouettes, the “free parking” car and the “go to jail” cop. With it’s distinct artwork Monopoly, unlike it’s many homemade imitators, could actually be copyrighted. Darrow received a copyright in 1933 and began selling his games to friends and then later to stores. Encouraged, he sent copies of the game to both Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, both of whom turned him down. Parkers found “52 fundamental errors” in the game, not the least of which was that it took too long to play (still an occasional criticism). By the end of the year Darrow had produced 7,500 copies of his game and got them into many of the biggest department stores in Philadelphia. Suddenly Parker Brothers had a change of heart. They bought the rights to the game and began mass-producing it. The game caught on like gangbusters and by Christmas of 1936 it was the most sought after Christmas gift item in the country, ultimately selling 1.8 million copies by years end.

It might seem a little odd that at the height of the Great Depression a game that seemed to celebrate the very speculation that was at least partially to blame for the economic state the country would be so thoroughly embraced. Then again, when one has no money to burn it’s fun to pretend to be rich. Also, compared to more expensive toys Monopoly was a good deal. It was a gift the whole family could enjoy, particularly if they had a limited entertainment budget. Monopoly easily made staying in for the night an enjoyable option. And while a character of Charles Darrow still appeared on the game box it was in 1936 that illustrations were added to the Chance and Community Chest cards featuring a wealthy looking gent wearing a top hat and tails and sporting a handlebar mustache. This was the birth of the Monopoly Man, aka Rich Uncle Penny Bags, aka Mr. Monopoly.

Monopoly has long since become a global phenomenon. A British version was also released in the U.K. in 1936 with the properties renamed after London streets. This version was actually sent to British P.O.W’s during World War II with escape maps, compasses, money and all sorts of supplies hidden within the playing pieces. Over the years countless international versions have been released, localized versions for just about every other major city in the U.S. not to mention a plethora of variations based on such popular entertainment properties such as Star Wars, The Simpsons, The Beatles, Harry Potter and countless others. Yet it’s the original game that we keep coming back to. After all, we all know that Park Place and Boardwalk make the most valuable monopoly, the more railroads you own the more rent you can charge and that sooner or later someone is going to have to advance to St. Charles Place.

Are you aware of the fact that when the electronic vibrator was invented to cure women of such ailments as hysteria, neuraligia, morbid irritability, indigestion and constipation (they did tend to be more relaxed after using them)? Did you know that among the many electronic consumer goods available at the turn of the century was electric soap – a cake of soap with an electrical cord that you plug into an electric socket while taking a bath? For some reason there are very few testimonies as to how well it worked. And lets not forget the U.S. military’s fail-safe method for avoiding a nuclear attack, which was to “duck and cover”.

P.T. Barnum said it best, there’s a sucker born every minute. It takes a genius to invent something that becomes an invaluable part of our daily lives but it also takes a special kind of genius to make us buy something of almost unimaginable stupidity. One such “genius” was Gary Dahl creator of – even after all these years it sounds ridiculous – the Pet Rock.

A copywriter in the advertising industry, Gary Dahl was in a bar outside of Santa Cruz when he heard some of the fellow patrons complain about their pets. Dahl then quipped that he had the perfect idea for a pet that didn’t have to be fed, didn’t have to be cleaned up after, didn’t have to go to the vet, was never disobedient and never even died. What was this wonder companion? A rock.

This simple joke proved to be the eureka moment that lead to one fad that was weird even in the age of Charo, Disco Duck and Billy Beer. By importing a bunch of smooth stones from Rosarito Beach, California, placing them in little cardboard boxes with “breathing holes” poked into the lid and filling it with some straw for a bed, the Pet Rock was born. In many ways though the real kicker was not the little geological companion but rather the 32-page instruction manual titled The Care and Training of your Pet Rock. The manual featured such delicious passages as:

“Rocks enjoy a rather long life span so the two of you will never have to part-at least not on you PET ROCK’S account.”

“Look at your rock intently, like you really mean business, and give the command, STAY. Surprisingly, most rocks have no difficulty learning this command and respond quite obediently the first time they hear it.”

“If you are getting blood out of your rock you should contact the Internal Revenue Service immediately. They’ve been attempting to do this very thing for years.”

With his background in marketing, Dahl was able to spread the word about this absurd product that frankly sounded like it should have been a joke in MAD Magazine. By October of 1975 they were being sold in stores across the country and were the must have Christmas gift of the year. Even if they were essentially a gag gift that didn’t stop Dahl from selling over a million of these sedimentary sensations by years end at $3.95 a pop. The beautiful thing was that there was practically no overhead. The rocks cost only a penny a piece and the straw cost next to nothing. With eons of erosion taking care of most of the manufacturing the only real expense was the printing of the boxes and mock instruction manuals.

To no ones surprise, the fad was a lot more short lived then any geological era. Dahl himself admitted they’d he’d be out of the Pet Rock business in a few months and “on to some other crazy scheme. Or lying on a beach somewhere not caring about it.”

Sure enough, by February the orders for Pet Rocks had ended, but not before Dahl had sold and shipped one million units to stores all across the country. By then the craze had pretty much ended and those already in stores had a very long shelf life. Dahl tried a few more gimmicky gifts – a Bicentennial Rock and “Sand Breeding Kits” didn’t gather much moss. In the end Dahl banked the money he made and opened up a tavern. With his characteristic love of irony he named the bar Carrie Nation after the famed axe-wielding temperance crusader.

Pet Rocks are occasionally re-issued. Vintage ones rarely sell for more then $20.00 on eBay. The Pet Rock may have been a short ride but until someone actually does figure out how to sell snow to the Eskimos then nothing will rock the pop culture zeitgeist like this thing did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFM80-Zxxqc&index=2&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41

 

In 1900 inventor/machinist Joshua Lionel Cowen co-founded with Harry C. Grant the Lionel Corporation. Figuring that storefront windows would attract passers-by with automated displays, Cowen installed a train set – powered by a small motor that he had originally invented for a portable fan – in the window of a store at 24 Murray Street in lower Manhattan that December. Nobody knows what the shop originally sold but the display did stop pedestrians in their (ahem!) tracks. Many then went into the store and inquired not about the shops inventory but rather asked if they could buy a train set of their own to give their kids for Christmas. Twelve train sets were sold and soon Lionel realized that they needed to focus on the trains, not window displays.

For the next three decades Lionel led the pack when it came to model railroads and as more and more homes were wired for electricity, more and more kids had a Lionel train set in their bedrooms. With beautifully crafted engines and cars, tracks that could be designed anew each time and all kinds of details like water towers, crossing signs, towns and figures, Lionel trains became an obsession for many and a bonding instrument for many fathers and sons.

Of course, these trains were always more on the higher end of the toy pyramid and when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and Lionel soon found itself struggling for survival as parents simply couldn’t afford to buy expensive starter sets or pricey add-ons for their kinder. The only way that Lionel could hope to survive was to produce more affordable trains. In 1930 they started a new banner called Winner Toys that sold inexpensive starter sets for just $3.25. What really helped turn the company around was a tie-in with one of the biggest names in show business, Walt Disney. A passionate train lover in his own right (he would later purchase a home specifically so that he could build his own ride-on model railroad on the property), Disney allowed Lionel to produce a small wind-up handcar that was operated by Mickey and Minnie Mouse which could run on Lionel’s O-gauge track. The $1.00 toy sold more then a quarter of a million units. A second car with Donald Duck and Goofy operating it also sold well. That’s when Lionel decided to up the ante by producing an entire Mickey Mouse circus train. Mickey drove the wind-up locomotive and the cars featured other Disney characters along for the ride. The tracks surrounded a big top with other cardboard cutouts depicting a circus midway. The inexpensive train set was a smash and led to a long association with Disney and Lionel, including a regular updated version of the original circus train.

Lionel again prospered after World War II, but as the years went by the demand for toy trains began to decline and they appealed more to the niche market of hobbyist rather then the mass market of kids. Yet even within this cottage industry Lionel is still the king of the rails.