Timeline of Games and Toys

4000 B.C. - 1760 

4000 B.C. A Babylonian board game is played that was probably an ancestor of chess and checkers. 

3000 B.C. First game resembling backgammon is played in Ancient Sumeria. Games similar to backgammon had probably been played by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for thousands of years. 
Stone marbles are first used in Egypt. Much later, glass marbles are popularized in the United States in the 1800s. 

2000 B.C. Egyptians begin to play a game that resembles modern-day checkers. 

1000 B.C. Kites appear in China. They have probably been flown since before recorded history. The first three-dimensional kite is invented in the 1890s by Lawrence Hargrave in Australia. 
Stone yo-yos begin to be used in Greece.

c. 300 B.C. Children in ancient Greece often play with horse-shaped figures with wheels. According to Greek legend, attacking Greek warriors hid inside an enormous hollow wooden horse to gain entrance to the city of Troy and end the Trojan War, around the early 12th century B.C. 


200 A.D. The first iron skates are used in Scandinavia. 

600 An ancestor of chess begins to be played. It evolves from an Indian game called Chaturanga. In the 15th century, modern chess pieces were finally standardized and the queen and bishop pieces acquired the powers that they hold today. 

969 Playing cards are first used in Asia. 

c. 1686-1705 In seventeenth-century Europe, dollhouses first gain popularity not as a children's toy but as a hobby for well-to-do ladies. One Dutch dollhouse, now on display in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, was painstakingly handcrafted and decorated for some 20 to 30 thousand guilders (the price real house in Amsterdam at the time). It featured miniature porcelain objects from China and was fitted out with furnishings of different types of wood, glass, marble, silk, velvet, and copper. After the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass-producing toys, and dollhouses become cheaper and more accessible to children. 

1759 Roller skates are invented by Joseph Merlin.

c. 1760 English mapmaker John Spilsbury pastes one of his maps to a board and cuts it in pieces along its borders, creating the earliest version of the jigsaw puzzle. The puzzles were used as a teaching device--for geography, history, and Bible studies--as well as for recreation. The first American jigsaw puzzles appeared around 1850; their popularity during the Great Depression, when companies manufactured cardboard puzzles that even the poorest families could afford. 
1800-1901

1800s Playgrounds begin to appear in American cities. The idea stemmed from the efforts of city reformers who were searching for more healthful play options for children in urban areas, where parks and yards were scarce. The playgrounds started off as "sand gardens," inspired by those seen by an American social worker while visiting Berlin. Financed by local businesses, city playgrounds soon included swings and see-saws. 

1817 Known in some form as far back as ancient Greece, the kaleidoscope is first patented by the Scottish scientist Sir David Brewster and begins to be sold as a children's toy. 

1840 The first American dollmaker is granted a patent and dolls begin to be mass-produced in America for the first time. Dolls are one of the oldest forms of toy, and have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 2000 B.C. 

1843 The Mansion of Happiness is designed by Anne Abbot and produced by W. and S.B. Ives in Salem, Massachusetts. It became the first board game sold in the United States. According to its rules, players performed good deeds to move forward towards eternal happiness, but move backward as punishment for cruelty, ingratitude, or other vices. 

1870 German immigrant Frederick August Otto Schwarz and his three brothers open a modest toy shop in New York City; it will eventually grow into the enormously successful F.A.O. Schwarz. 

1886 The first BB gun is created. Made for children, it scared many parents because it is actually a working gun that can cause injury. The BB gun was a descendant of the cap gun, which was invented soon after the Civil War, when some shotgun manufacturers converted their factories to make toys. Penny pistols and other authentic-looking toy guns also began to appear in the 1880s. 

1887 The speaking doll, which had first been invented by Johann Maelzel in 1820, is improved when Thomas Edison combines his phonograph technology with a doll, allowing it to speak. 

1896 A westernized version of the Indian game Parcheesi is introduced in England under the name Ludo. Parcheesi is a type of "cross and circle" game, which dates back to 300 A.D. and was played in the Korean, Syrian, and Aztec cultures.

Late 1880s Mah Jongg, which was named for a Chinese word meaning "sparrow," originates in the Ningbo area of China. Games resembling Mah Jongg had been played as long ago as 800. 

1901 At just 22 years old, Joshua Lionel Cowen creates a battery-powered train engine as an "animated advertisement" for products in a store's display window. To his surprise, customers are more interested in purchasing his toy train than the merchandise in the display. Lionel Trains is born.
1902-1940

1902 In America, toy bears begin to be called Teddy Bears" after President Theodore Roosevelt. In only a few years, Teddy Bear-mania swept the world, and by 1915 large-scale toy bear manufacturing was in full swing. 

1903 Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith produce the first box of Crayola crayons. 

1913 Former Olympian (Gold, Pole Vault, 1908) and medical doctor A.C. Gilbert invents the Erector Set, a motorized toy made of steel parts that children use to build models of everything from Ferris wheels and skyscrapers to record players and microscopes. 

1914 Charles Pajeau develops a collection of rugged wooden toys similar to the Erector Set, but designed for younger children; he calls them Tinker Toys. Pajeau was inspired by watching children poke sticks into the holes of thread spools. 

1915 Johnny Gruelle, a newspaper cartoonist, begins to sell Raggedy Ann dolls based on one he had made for his daughter, Marcella. 

1916 John Lloyd Wright, the son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright invents Lincoln Logs, interlocking toy logs children use to build imaginative structures. Wright was inspired by the way that his father designed the earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan. 

1927 A tough, durable kind of plastic called polystyrene is invented. Although the first plastic, celluloid, was invented in the 1860s, polystyrene was the first type strong enough to really suit toy making. 

1928 The Mickey Mouse character is created by Walt Disney. Two years later, Charlotte Clark began making stuffed Mickey Mouse dolls, and Disney's legendary merchandising was born. 

1929 The yo-yo is popularized in the United States after entrepreneur Donald Duncan sees the toy being demonstrated in Los Angeles. Duncan bought a small yo-yo company for $25,000 and 30 years later sales of Duncan yo-yos reach $25 million dollars. 

1931 Alfred M. Butts, an unemployed architect from Poughkeepsie, New York, invents a word game called the Criss Cross Game. In 1948, Butts sold the rights to the game to entrepreneur James Brunot, who trademarked it under the name Scrabble. Scrabble went on to sell more than 100 million sets worldwide, including one to two million each year in North America alone. 

1935 Parker Brothers introduces Monopoly. By offering a way to "get rich quick" to Americans struggling through the Great Depression, Monopoly quickly becomes a bestseller, eventually attracting more than 480 million players all over the world. 

1938 Piano tuner and camera buff William Gruber is the mastermind behind the View-Master three-dimensional viewer, which is first sold only through photography stores. Later, after acquiring the licensing rights to all Disney characters, View-Master hit the jackpot, offering 3-D images of stills from Disney movies and TV programs and views of the Disneyland amusement park. 

Early 1940s Affordable, detailed model airplanes begin to be mass-produced. Originally designed to help manufacturers sell airplanes to the military, they begin to make practical toys with the introduction of plastic. Before plastic, models were made with balsa wood provided in kits. Otherwise, consumers had to cut their own wood pieces to fit a provided pattern.
1943-1960

1943 While searching for a suspension device to ease rough sailing on battleships, navy engineer Richard James discovers that a torsion spring will "walk" end over end when knocked over. James brought the discovery home to his wife, who named the new toy "Slinky". If stretched end to end, the Slinky toys sold since 1945 would wrap around the world 126 times. Despite their enormous success, Slinkys are still made in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, on the same eight machines that James began with over 50 years ago.

1947 When a group of Minnesota teachers realize their attempt to make and sell garden tools is failing, they decide to use their extra materials to make toys. They named the toy trucks they create Tonka trucks, after nearby Lake Minnetonka. Fifty years later, they had sold 30 million of the miniature vehicles, and used up 120,000 gallons of paint on their signature yellow dump trucks. 

1949 Ole Christiansen , a Danish toy maker, begins to manufacture toy blocks with a new twist. Christiansen creates a plastic brick that can be locked together in different configurations. The Lego, named from the Danish leg godt, meaning "play well," was born. The continuing popularity of the Lego brick probably stems from its ability to stimulate a child's imagination--just six bricks fit together in 102,981,500 different ways. 

Eleanor Abbott designs Candy Land while recovering from polio in San Diego, California. Abbott designed games for child polio victims, and Candy Land's gingerbread-man game pieces, Peppermint Stick Forest, Gingerbread Plum Tree, and Gum Drop Mountain proved so popular with the children that Milton Bradley soon agreed to buy the game. Today, Candy Land is recognized internationally as one of a child's favorite first games. 

1950 Silly Putty is introduced at the International Toy Fair in New York. 

1952 Banking on the idea that children like to play with their food, Hasbro introduces Mr. Potato Head. In its original form, the toy only included parts--plastic eyes, ears, noses and mouths--and children were directed to use them to outfit real potatoes. Eight years later, the manufacturer Hasbro began including a hard plastic potato "body" and the modern version of the toy was born. 

Edward Haas brings the Pez mint dispenser to the United States. It was initially unsuccessful, but gained popularity after Haas changed the original lighter-like design by adding a cartoon head and replacing the mints with fruit-flavored candy. 

1954 Jack Odell creates the original Matchbox car when he makes a small brass model of a Road Roller and puts it into a matchbox so that his daughter could bring it to school. Today, 100 million Matchbox cars are sold each year. 

1956 At a Fourth of July family barbecue, Milton Levine dreams up the idea for the first Ant Farm, complete with live ants.
Play-doh enters the market as a wallpaper cleaner. Non-toxic and less messy than regular modeling clay, it was soon recognized that the cleaner made an excellent toy. The innovative product made Joe McVicker a millionaire before his 27th birthday. To date, 700 million pounds of Play-doh have been sold. 

1959 The Barbie doll is introduced at the American Toy Fair in New York City by Elliot Handler, founder of Mattel Toys, and his wife, Ruth. The busty blond doll--named after the Handlers' young daughter, Barbara--became one of the best-known icons of postwar American popular culture. 

Wham-O founders Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr begin to market the Hula Hoop, after getting the idea from a friend who saw schoolchildren in Australia twirl bamboo hoops around their waist for exercise. Melin and Knerr were actually reincarnating a toy that was probably used as long ago as 1000 B.C. in Egypt, and, later, Greece and Rome. In the first year of production, 15 million Hula Hoops were sold. 

1960 Ohio Art markets the first Etch-a-Sketch. They have since sold more than 100 million of these popular drawing toys. The Etch-a-Sketch was invented by Arthur Granjean in the late 1950s and was originally called L'Ecran Magique. 

In 1869, Milton Bradley invented a game he called The Checkered Game of Life. Its popularity launched Bradley's career in the game business. In 1959, executives at Bradley's company asked game inventor Reuben Klammer to come up with a game to commemorate Milton Bradley's anniversary. Inspired by one of Bradley's old Checkered Game of Life gameboards, Klamer designed the now-classic Game of Life, released in 1960.
1965-1977

1965 Stanley Weston creates a doll for boys based on a new television show called The Lieutenant. The doll, G.I. Joe, proved more popular than the TV series, to the surprise of many toy manufacturers who had assumed for years that boys wouldn't play with dolls. Interestingly, a female G.I. Joe doll introduced years later was a flop. 

1966 Elliot Handler, one of the co-founders of Mattel, Inc., invents Hot Wheels when he decides to add axles and rotating wheels to small model cars. His gravity-powered car with special low-friction styrene wheels reached speeds of 300 miles per hour. 

1969 Parker Brothers markets the first Nerf ball, a polyurethane foam ball that is safe for indoor play. By year's end, more than four million Nerf balls had been sold. 

1972 Magnavox introduces Odyssey, the first video game machine, featuring a primitive form of paddle ball. Other companies soon invested in the video game business and, by 1976 hockey, tennis, and squash were available. 

1973 Dungeons & Dragons is invented by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. The game created a whole new fantasy/adventure category of toys, which is now a $250 million market. 

1976 Nolan Bushnell sells his video game company, Atari, to Warner Brothers. Atari's popular Pong and Super Pong video tennis games soon gave way to a home video cartridge system that ran full-color games, from baseball to Pac-Man. By 1982, Atari was making $2 billion a year, but lost its business just as quickly through over-licensing. In 1983, Atari sent thousands of cartridges to Texas to be used as landfill. 

1977 Kenner Toys introduces a line of Star Wars action figures, capitalizing on the popularity of George Lucas's blockbuster film. They dominate the action figure market and set a precedent for popular toy and video game franchises based on movies. 
1980-1993

1980 Ideal Toys renames their Magic Cube toy Rubik's Cube after its inventor, Hungarian sculptor and architecture professor Erno Rubik. The multi-colored cube is now said to be the world's best-selling toy, and there have been some 300 million Rubik's Cubes (or imitations) sold worldwide. 

1983 A Japanese company, Nintendo, brings the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a home video game system, to the United States. With 52 colors, realistic sound, and high-speed action, it catches the attention of retailers who were initially skittish due to Atari's collapse. The NES, as well as the popular Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda game cartridges, were the top-selling toys for the 1987, 1988, and 1988 holiday seasons. In 1989, Nintendo released Game Boy, a battery-powered, hand-held video game system. 

1985 Artist Xavier Roberts introduces his Cabbage Patch Kids into the mass market. Roberts first designed the dolls in 1977 to help pay his way through school. Cabbage Patch Kids became the most successful new dolls in the history of the toy industry. Although more than three million of the dolls were produced, supply could not keep up with demand, and doll sales for all of 1985 totaled $600 million (or more than $1.1 billion in 2005 dollars). 

1986 Rob Angel, a 24-year-old waiter from Seattle, introduces Pictionary, a game in which partners try to guess phrases based on each other's drawings.

1987 Engineer Scott Stillinger invents the Koosh Ball in an effort to teach young children how to catch. He tied rubber bands together to make a small, easy-to-catch ball. The name "koosh" comes from the sound the ball makes as it lands in a person's hand. 

1993 Toy inventor H. Ty Warner begins to market understuffed plush bean bag toys called Beanie Babies. The toys are designed to be inexpensive so that a child could purchase them. Warner began with nine Beanie Babies (a dog, a platypus, a moose, a bear, a dolphin, a frog, a lobster, a whale, and a pig). The toys were not an instant success. It was only after the first eleven Beanie Babies were retired in 1996 that they became a collector's item. -- An estimated 100 million Beanie Babies are sold in 1996 alone. 

Mattel announces it will be merging with Fisher-Price, creating a $2.5 billion corporation that will rival the leading toy manufacturer, Hasbro. Barbie, Fisher-Price, Disney toys, and Hot Wheels make up 85% of Mattel's sales. 

Mortal Kombat becomes the most popular title in the fast-growing home video-game market. 
1994-2007

1994 Sales of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers action figures top $400 million in the U.S. alone. The Japanese toy company Bandai Co. released the figures to accompany the repackaged U.S. version of a long-running Japanese live-action TV series. 

1996 The bright red Tickle Me Elmo, based on a Sesame Street character, arrives in stores, causing the Christmas shopping crowds to multiply as parents rushed to get the year's "it" toy. Elmo reacted to a child's touch, first chuckling and eventually laughing hysterically when squeezed repeatedly. 

1997 The online retailer eToys.com launches, quickly becoming one of the most popular and fastest-growing cyber toy shops. In addition to toys, the site also included books, videos, computer software, and video games in its inventory.

1998 Debuting in October, the furry "pet" called Furby--animated with six built-in sensors that allowed it to react to movement, light and darkness, and touch--begins selling out as soon as it hits the stores. Furby's range of responses included opening and closing its eyes, wiggling its ears, and speaking a number of phrases in English and "Furbish". Online, crazed consumers were soon offering up to $200 for the $30 toy. 

1999 The collectible card trading game based on the Pok茅mon video games becomes the newest success of the franchise, launched in America by Nintendo in 1998. In an attempt to replicate the way the video game is played, each Pok茅mon card had individual strengths and weaknesses, and players attempted to "knock out" each other's cards in order to win. 

2000 Selling for around $100 retail, the Razor Scooter becomes the top-selling toy of the year. The lightweight aluminum scooter's popularity began in cities like New York and Los Angeles, but soon swept the country, and more than 5 million were sold within a year of its debut. 

Sony launches its new video game console, the Playstation 2. Despite competition from Sega's Dreamcast, Nintendo's GameCube, and Microsoft's Xbox, the Playstation 2 becomes the fastest-selling game console in history, with more than 106 million units shipped worldwide by the end of 2006. 

2001 Squishy, battery-powered Jumbo Music Blocks become a popular toy for babies and young children. The large foam blocks featured music, secret pockets, and interactive activities that helped children learn the alphabet and improve motor skills (by working zippers, snaps and buttons). 

M.G.A. Entertainment releases the first four Bratz dolls. With their skinny bodies clad in trendy, provocative urban fashions and their big heads and pouty lips, the anime-like dolls quickly became a sensation, outselling Barbie in several countries around the world. 

2005 The Ganz company releases a new line of plush toys called Webkinz, which quickly start a trend that is compared to the Beanie Babies phenomenon of the 1990s. Using a special code included with each toy, children could log on to a Web site that allowed them to "adopt" their pet and virtually interact with it. 

2006 The next generation of video game consoles is represented by Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's Playstation 3, and Nintendo's Wii. The video game industry has grown to generate some $13 billion in revenues per year.