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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

To Think, Darlings, That This Children's Game Foreshadowed The Sixties Sexual Revolution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


                                   The game we all know as "Twister," girls, was created by two mid-Westerners, Chuck Foley, and Neil Rabens, for a manufacturer in the St. Louis area, around 1965.  At the time, the game was called "Pretzel," but when Milton Bradley decided to manufacture it, and did, in 1966, they changed it to the more exciting sounding "Twister."

                                      For me, the generation for whom "Twister" was produced, and one of the first kids in my neighborhood to own it, what counted for me was the big, rug like game board, with those colorful dots, and the fact that you needed to take off your shoes to play the game.  Going shoeless has always appealed to me--it still does!!!!!!!!--and I never overlook an opportunity when it was presented.

                                        "Twister" was, in fact, called "a stocking feet game," but when it first came out, its detractors, competitors not smart enough to snap it up, accused Foley, Rabens, and Milton Bradley, in general, of selling "sex in a box."

                                           As one who vividly remembers my prepubescent youth, I can readily say the thought of sex--THEN--never crossed my mind, while playing "Twister."  It certainly would, when I played it, say, ten years after that (did I??????) or if I did today, in which case I would do myself more bodily injury, with age, than in those prepubescent Sixties.

                                             "Twister" was a novelty when it came out, and at the same, one just HAD to have it!   I am sure it was not long before college dorms, or the 'Bob and Carol' crowd were injecting sex into the game, (so that, when the Sexual Revolution did happen, it finally became a part of it!) but for those of us originals, we never gave it a thought.

                                                On July 1, in St. Louis Park, one of the game's creators, Chuck Foley, died at the age of 82. His co-creator, Neil Rabens, lives on.  I have no idea how much, if, indeed, a lot, of money the men made from the game, but I can attest it is one of the few Milton Bradley games from that era that is still on the market today.

                                                   "Twister" is Foley's legacy, and will be Rabens' too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                     But don't kid yourselves, darlings!!!!!!!!!  Today, sex sells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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