TWISTER — THE CHICAGO BRAND MUSEUM

THE CREATION OF TWISTER

Twister was created in 1966 by Chuck Foley, an inventor and toy designer for Lakeside Toys in Minneapolis, along with Neil Rabens. The inspiration for Twister came from a game called King Footsie, created by Reynolds Guyer as a promotional game for Johnson Wax shoe polish. King Footsie was played barefoot on a large mat covered with colored squares. Players had different colored ankle bands and only stepped on squares matching their assigned color. Guyer first presented King Footsie to 3M, which produced a variety of games, but the concept was rejected because the large floor mat did not fit in with the company's existing product line.

TWISTER’S NATIONWIDE SUCCESS

Guyer then hired Chuck Foley and Neil Rabens, who came up with the idea of rearranging the colored dots in rows, making it more difficult for players, making them more tangled as they moved. He also introduced a spinner and a caller, who directed players to place specific hands or feet on designated colored dots. Players were eliminated if anything other than their hands or feet touched the mat or if they landed on the wrong color, and the last player remaining was declared the winner. Although the game was developed under the name Pretzel, it was released by the Milton Bradley Company in 1966 as Twister. Twister was not immediately popular because players acted as the game pieces, and there were no similar games at the time. Retailers like Sears refused to sell it or include it in their catalogs, prompting the Milton Bradley Company to almost pull the game entirely. Everything changed on May 3, 1966, when an immensely successful PR booking on The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson and actress Eva Gabor played the game on air. The next day, customers were lining up to buy Twister from the few stores that carried it. The company then had to mass-produce Twister and sell more than 3 million copies by the following year. Twister has gone on to be included in the National Toy Hall of Fame and has become one of the best-selling party games ever created.