THE STORY OF MONOPOLY, SlLLY PUTTY, BINGO, TWISTER, FRISSBEE, SCRABBLE, ETCETERA (5 page)

Next, specialized craftsmen carve each new model out of resin blocks. These are called “patterns” and are four times as large as the miniatures so that any error in shape or measurement can be easily detected. Every detail of the pattern is compared and recompared with the photos and specifications to make sure that the model is in scale with itself and—as in the “Models of Yesteryear” series—in agreement with the original automobile.

Once a pattern has been perfected, it serves as a guide in the cutting of the actual-size molds. More than three hundred skilled toolmakers are involved in this delicate cutting operation, which uses a needle as fine as a dentist’s high-speed drill. The operators wear jewelers’ lenses to check and doublecheck for accuracy.

The final “Matchbox” production step is the assembly, packaging, and shipping of the completed models. This takes place on some sixty assembly lines, where miniature car chassis are automatically riveted to bodies, plastic windows are fitted in, axles are positioned, and wheels and tires are attached. Transfers, or decals, are affixed in the last stages of assembly.

The models are then put in trays, which are carried to automatic packing stations. When the plant was being set up, Odell and Smith became worried that the many women who worked on the assembly line would have trouble lifting the heavy cartons of die-cast vehicles. Odell worked out a scheme for transporting the products in containers the size and shape of cookie tins, which seemed to hold the right weight for the women to lift. As a result, the whole Lesney conveyor belt system was built to accommodate cookie tins.

The assembled “Matchbox” cars and trucks are packed and sealed at the automatic packing station. Nimble-fingered employees picking up six vehicles at a time place them into larger cartons. At last, fully packed and enclosed, the models travel in batches to the storage area, where electronic equipment routes each package to a specific shipping point.

Lesney’s millions of elf-sized cars and buses seem to appeal equally to children and to automobile enthusiasts, a double market that is quite unusual in the toy business. Unlike the electric train, which has become more and more the province of the collector, miniature cars and related vehicles continue to capture the imagination of auto lovers of every age and interest.

While the quality, detailing, cuteness, and very low price of “Matchbox” toys contribute to their popularity among both children and adults, there is a major difference in the psychology of collecting in these two consumer groups.

Children from about the age of two up, according to Irwin Goodman, a vice president at Lesney, love “Matchbox” models. But they want a lot of them chiefly because they see a lot of vehicles on the streets and roads and highways. Kids tend to
amass,
rather than collect; they want to look at and play with as many little cars as they can get. When youngsters get older and a bit more sophisticated, they will expand the richness of play by putting “Matchbox” (and other) autos into fantasized situations: cars strung along a busy interchange, trucks loading and unloading at the supermarket, buses picking up figures of boys and girls for school. The awareness of detail and recognition of vehicle types comes later, according to the degree of interest the child finds in cars as machines and/or material possessions. When the youngster has reached this stage, he has crossed over into the province of the collector.

There are several “Matchbox” fan clubs in the country: one for kids, run by the company-, and others for hard-core collectors, independently operated. The latter groups hold conventions where old “Matchbox” cars are traded, auctioned, and sold, and also publish fan magazines which Les-ney’s staff often consults when trying to recall some early model it once produced.

“Matchbox” collectors, like hobbyists in any other field, know their product thoroughly. They can recite the axle size of every single model, or tell you the color of the original car the model was patterned after.

Thanks to enthusiasts of all ages, the Lesney factories turn out enough “Matchbox” toys every year to construct a line of miniature cars, bumper to bumper, from London to Melbourne, Australia.

Hugging the highway of success with its small, but extremely authentic tires, the “Matchbox” model keeps rolling along.

Luck is just like lightning: it never strikes twice in the same place. Or so the gamblers say.

But in the case of Edwin S. Lowe, Dame Fortune forgot herself and smiled twice on his career. As a result, the ex-salesman discovered by pure serendipity the twentieth century’s two runaway best sellers among games of chance— Bingo and Yahtzee.

Lowe’s story is a colorful one, involving a carnival pitchman, a mad professor, miscellaneous priests and policemen, a pair of Bermuda socialites, and the malapropism of a girl on the verge of ecstasy.

In contrast to these bizarre elements, there is nothing at all flamboyant about the founder and ex-head of the E. S. Lowe Co., a soft-spoken, highly articulate man who usually looks thoughtful and somewhat abstracted—perhaps even a little wistful.

Lowe’s unassuming attitude belies the fact that in addition to heading up one of the nation’s top ten game firms, he is heavily involved in construction, finance, broadcasting, and theatrical ventures.

But games have made Lowe’s fortune. His company sells a sizable line of staple games, as well as a sprinkling of promotional ones. However, it is Bingo and Yahtzee that have remained at the top of the list.

Like Monopoly, Bingo is a product of the American Depression. “I was a toy salesman in those days,” Lowe recalls, “and, believe me, times were rough. I was pretty tired and discouraged on the night that I discovered what was to become Bingo.”

Lowe had launched a game business just before the market crash. His company’s sales were poor, and the venture seemed chancy.

One night, after a disappointing sales trip to Atlanta, the weary businessman got into his car and began driving toward Jacksonville for his next appointments. Soon a cluster of bright lights on the road ahead caught his attention. Knowing that there was no city in that direction, Lowe drove toward the lights and discovered they were coming from a smalltown carnival. He parked and got out.

All but one of the carnival booths were closed, but the one still open was jammed with people. An eager crowd was clustered around a horseshoe shaped table covered with numbered cards and beans. The game being played was a Lotto variant called Beano, and the pitchman—clearly the only one in the carnival making money—called out numbers, which players filled in on their cards. Anyone who filled a line on a card horizontally, vertically, or diagonally won a Kewpie doll; it cost a nickel a card to play. The players’ equipment consisted of a dozen cards with hand-made rubber-stamp impressions; the caller’s set of numbers was a cigarbox full of wooden discs with hand-written numbers on them.

The pitchman later told Lowe that while traveling in Germany the previous summer with a carnival, he had bought a game of Lotto for his children. They liked it so much that he suspected it had the makings of a good tent game, so he worked up the variation he named Beano using a set of seventy-five “call” numbers. It was so successful in Europe that he brought it back to the States, where he continued working the concession.

Lowe tried to play Beano that night, but he couldn’t even get near the game table because none of the players would give up a seat. “But while I was waiting around,” Lowe explains, “I watched the people playing Beano, and I noticed that they were practically addicted to it. The pitchman wanted to close up, but every time he said, ‘This is the last game,’ it did no good. The players simply wouldn’t budge. When he finally closed at three o’clock in the morning, he had to chase them out.”

The salesman was intrigued by what he saw. If the game was so fascinating to play, wouldn’t it make sense to put it in his foundering line? But perhaps the carnival experience was a one-time freak of human nature. How could he test it?

Lowe bought some rubber stamps, cardboard, and beans, and invited a few friends over. Running the game the same way he had seen it at the carnival, Lowe called the numbers and observed his friends’ behavior. Soon they were playing with the same intensity he had observed at the carnival.

Lowe invited more people over and continued to test the game. Then, during one session, he noticed a girl who seemed close to winning. She grew more and more excited as her card filled up, until at last there was only one number left . . . and it was called!

The girl hopped up and down with glee. But she also became tongue-tied in her enthusiasm and, instead of shouting “Beano,” started stuttering, “B-B-B-BINGO!”

“I cannot describe the strange sense of elation which that girl’s shriek brought to me,” Lowe said. “All I could think of was that I was going to come out with this game—and it was going to be called Bingo!”

Another surprise was in store for the businessman that night, because his guests behaved exactly like the carnival crowd. Refusing to leave, even after the prizes ran out, they stayed to play for money. Lowe watched in amazement.

At that time, his company was producing three other items. Bingo became the fourth, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind which was the winner. The earliest Lowe edition came in two prices: a twelve-card set for one dollar retail, and a two-dollar set with twice as many cards. Bingo took off like a rocket, quickly putting the sinking company on its feet.

Imitations came out as fast as other companies could print them. Although the game was derived from one in public domain, the name Bingo could have been guarded. But Lowe did not put much stock in idea protection. His firm couldn’t possibly meet the terrific demand for Bingo anyway, so he told his competitors to pay him a dollar a year and call their games Bingo, too. In this way, Bingo became the generic term for the game. Had Lowe decided to protect the name, he would have become involved in one legal action after another. So many Bingo imitators came out in 1929-30 that he couldn’t even keep track of them.

Lowe’s attitude is not unusually stoic for a toymaker. Knocking off, as industrial copying is called, is an almost universal practice. Even firms that complain about copiers are rarely guiltless. Copying has become so commonplace that some businessmen figure the probable effect of future knockoffs into the initial cost projections for new products.

About a month after the game appeared, Bingo’s unique position in American culture was secured when a priest from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, laid his parish problems on Lowe’s doorstep. The priest’s church was in grave financial trouble, and a woman parishioner had suggested the new game of Bingo as a way of raising money. An early test session proved popular, and the priest bought several games. But there was one drawback to the scheme: too many prizes had to be distributed. With only twenty-four basic cards, as many as ten winners could claim loot after every game.

As the priest spoke, Lowe began to see the tremendous fund-raising possibilities of Bingo. But to allow a larger profit margin for the promoters, the game would have to include more combinations of numbers on the cards.

Lowe went to an elderly professor of mathematics at Columbia University, Carl Leffler, and asked him to devise

six thousand new Bingo cards with nonrepeating number groupings—a mind-boggling task.

Leffler agreed, and started turning out new combinations at a fixed price per card. But the problem grew more difficult with every new card, and the professor could not work fast enough. As an incentive, Lowe raised the price per card, but by the time Leffler was half done, he was becoming “very difficult to handle,” according to Lowe. “We were driving him, offering him as much as a hundred dollars a combination toward the last. It was a terribly tough job. I was going daffy myself checking those cards.”

The lure of the money and the challenge of the project evidently wouldn’t let Leffler quit. Eventually, with Lowe’s continued prodding, he succeeded in producing all six thousand cards.

He also went insane.

The subsequent history of Bingo is happier. It became so popular as a fund-raising activity in town halls and churches— including the Wilkes-Barre parish, which was saved—that Lowe distributed a free booklet on the customs of the Bingo party: how large a group to accommodate, the proper ratio of prizes to profit, and so on. By 1934, there were ten thousand weekly public Bingo games throughout the country. Though the craze has since abated, Bingo is still firmly entrenched in many congregations.

Eventual clashes with public opinion and the law were inevitable. Since it originally became popular as a Roman Catholic activity, much of the early criticism of Bingo was voiced by various Protestant sects on quasi-religious grounds. One Brooklyn preacher, for instance, gave a sermon calling Bingo “a fool’s game,” and accusing the Catholics of exploiting the cupidity of parishioners. A priest scoffed in reply: “I see no reason why an old lady can’t risk a nickel on a basket of strawberries!”

Some communities declared Bingo illegal, and rumors began to circulate about professional gamblers moving into the “Bingo racket” with a series of private casinos in New Jersey. Eventually, though, public opposition began to erode, largely because of the impossibility of policing anti-Bingo legislation. One Brooklyn police officer was even demoted and eventually retired after zealously upholding anti-Bingo laws in his borough. Though his superior claimed the officer was disciplined for reasons of insubordination, the press speculated that the real cause was his frequent raids on Brooklyn churches.

Bingo is one of those rare games that seem to appeal to youngsters and adults alike, although adults tend to be more frequent players. It has traditionally been most popular with women living in poorer neighborhoods. The peculiar thing about Bingo is it is not played as a social activity. A game in progress leaves no room for conversation, so intent are the players on hearing the numbers called. Anyone thoughtless enough to talk out loud during a fund-raising game is immediately and sternly hushed.