Vintage Anagrams Game

Today’s treasure is an old Parker Brothers game titled “The Games of Letters and Anagrams on Wooden Blocks” that I found during a recent round of the antique stores here in Knoxville. The Wikipedia entry on Anagrams says this game was first published in the late 1890’s, and The Strong museum in Rochester, New York shows a box having a lid identical to mine in their National Museum of Play, and they date the game to 1890. My game’s box is in remarkably good shape for its age, with the box bottom totally intact and just one side of the lid separated at the corners. The box sports a price tag on the bottom that says “Joseph Horne Co., Pittsburgh, PA, $1.00.”

This game, as were all of the Parker Brothers games until 1991, was manufactured in Salem, Massachusetts. The company Parker Brothers was founded by George S. Parker (1866-1952, who created his first game in 1883, at the age of 16. He and his older brother Charles were playing a game called Everlasting, which was designed to teach young ‘uns good morals, and they were bored with the game and tired of “being preached at,” so George modified the game to make the objective to become the richest player, and instituted the concepts of borrowing from a bank, partnerships, and profit-sharing. As the game matured, he called it “Banking,” and it became so popular with his friends and family that he unsuccessfully tried to interest two Boston publishers to produce it. Undeterred, George spent $40 of his paper route earning to publish 500 sets, eventually selling all but twelve, netting a profit of $100!

Of course, George went on to found a game company, first called the George S. Parker Company, in 1883, and later renaming it to Parker Brothers in 1888 when Charles joined the business, followed by a third brother, Edward H. in 1898. George was the guiding light of the company, generally conceiving of the game ideas and writing the rules for them. His philosophy was that games should be played for enjoyment – not for the improvement of one’s morals and values. Word-making games were very popular in the latter part of the 19th century, and the game concepts were eventually merged with the crossword puzzle format by Alfred Butts in the 1930s to create the game Scrabble™. While my set is missing the instructions, the principle of the game is to create as many words as possible from letters you draw from the pool. The words are not connected to either other words made by you or made by others, in contrast to Scrabble™. Once you’ve presented a word, others can “steal” it by using all of the letters in your word to create a new word, thus increasing their number of completed words.

Does anyone recall having played this game? Maybe you have a set in the attic!