The 1960s were the golden era for many toys, but especially board games. Plenty of the games we know and love today were first introduced in the ’60s as a fun and easy form of entertainment for the whole family.
The board game industry was booming in the ’60s as families grew bigger and parents became more generous with what they bought their children. As more and more games were invented, they became the perfect way to spend downtime with the family.
Starts at 60 has opened the vault to some of the best board games introduced in the ’60s that are still available on shelves today. How many do you recognise?
The Game of Life simulates your travels through each stage of life, from schooling through to retirement and you had the possibility of jobs, marriage and children along the way.
First introduced in the late-’60s, Headache uses a round board and its dice was in a bubble at the centre of the board. The whole object of this game was to stack as many of your cones on the tops of your opponent’s cones in order to be declared the winner.
KerPlunk consists of a transparent plastic tube, plastic rods and a dozen marbles or more, players take turns removing the plastic rods from the tube while trying to minimise the number of marbles that fell through. Naturally, the player who accumulated the least amount of marbles was the winner.
Mouse Trap was one of the first mass-produced 3D games on the market. Players had to build a working mouse trap and once it had been built each player took a turn in trying to trap the other players’ mouse-shaped game pieces.
Operation is a battery-operated game of skill, you had to use your hand-eye coordination to remove body parts of the ‘patient’ in return for money. It’s a tricky game because the pieces of the ailments fit neatly into spaces provided on the board.
Trouble is a game similar to Headache. You pop the dice in the bubble at the centre of the board and pieces are moved in accordance to the number. If you landed on an opponent’s piece you sent their piece back to the start.
Who doesn’t love this game played on a plastic mat? The gist of Twister is to put your hands and feet onto the colour that corresponded with the instruction given by the spinner. It led to numerous precarious positions, which would eventually lead to someone falling down and then they would be eliminated. The last person ‘standing’ was the winner.