Top 2016 toys“Right hand red!” “Left foot Green!” These well known commands are known to lead the twisted game of tangled bodies called Twister. Twister is a game the has one player spinning the spinner and multiple players battling it out on a colorful spotted mat. Players must place their hand or foot on the colored spot chosen by the spinner and try to get twisted up without falling. The last person standing wins.

To celebrate Twister’s 50th anniversary, Reyn Guyer, inventor of the game, has written a book called Right Brain Red. The book tells the complete story of Twister, but you can check out some highlights of Twister’s history below:

In 1964, while trying to design a promotion for Johnson Wax’s Shoe Polish, Reyn Guyer developed an idea for a game that uses people as the playing pieces, and a mat on the floor as the game board. He pitched King’s Footsie to 3M where they rejected it. Guyer then hired Charles Foley and Neil Rabens, two game developers, who set up a design team to rearrange the colored dots in a row on the mat. This design made it so that players had to use their hands as well as their feet to become more knotted which led to renaming the game Pretzel.

In 1966, Pretzel, as well as other mat games, were introduced to The Milton Bradley Co. in Springfield, Mass. where Mel Taft, senior vice president of research and development for the company, chose the game. The company officially changed the game’s name to Twister. When Twister was first released, it wasn’t accepted by society because it was socially unacceptable at that time to be as close to others as the game required. Twister was the first game that used players’ bodies as playing pieces and required them to bend in and stretch in challenging positions, and consumers failed to understand the concept of the game and it was pulled of the market.Toy Reviews

On the May 3, 1966 episode of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson challenged his guest for that evening to a game of Twister. The game’s debut on The Tonight Show sent customers rushing to the store to buy it. Abercrombie & Fitch was the only store left with the Twister game in stock and quickly became overwhelmed with customers. Sears eventually changed their minds and restocked the games. By early 1967, more than 3 million Twister games had been sold.

In 1987, 4,160 students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst positioned hundreds of Twister mats together and set a world record for the largest Twister game that was ever played.

Due to popular demand of the games, many product extensions have been introduced over the years. Hasbro released Twister moves in 2003 and the Twister Dance DVD in 2006. In 2007, they added Twister Scram, Twister Take Out, and Twister Dodgeball. Adding to the outdoor fun, Hasbro also introduced Twister Hopscotch in 2008 and Twister Hoopla in 2010.

In 2015, Twister and Thomas Rhett teamed up for a game with his fans on the World Record Breaking Twister mat, which measured 27,159.616 square feet. In the same year, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted Twister into its Toy Hall of Fame.

Twister is a classic and is guaranteed to bring out the competitive side of its players as well as hours of laughs. The competition to outbalance your opponents gets real, real fast.

Toy Reviews 2016

 

About the author

Chelsey Hubric

Chelsey Hubric

Chelsey Hubric is the editorial intern at Adventure Publishing Group and Toy Insider. She is a senior at Hofstra University, majoring in journalism with a minor in global studies. Chelsey enjoys spending her free time binge watching Gossip Girl on Netflix and hanging out with her friends. You can follow her on Twitter at @chubric25.

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