Action Man was relaunched in 1993 by Hasbro. The initial releases were the US Hall of Fame figures modelled on the 3 3/4" GI Joe line-up. This was followed by a 30th anniversary edition modelled after the original 1966 release, but using the GI Joe "Hall of Fame" body, that lacked the articulation, possibility, and attention to scale and proportion of the original figure and accessories.
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and a player wins by removing all of his pieces from the board before his opponent. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games in the world.
Balderdash is a board game of bluffing and trivia created by Laura Robinson and Paul Toyne. The game was first released in 1984, under Canada Games. It was later picked up by a U.S company, The Games Gang, and eventually became the property of Hasbro, and finally Mattel. The game is based on a classic parlour game called Fictionary. The game has sold over 15 million copies worldwide to date. It is aimed at fans of word games, such as Scrabble.
Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the American toy-company Mattel, Inc. and launched in March 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration.
Battleship (also Battleships or Sea Battle) is a guessing game for two players. It is known worldwide as a pencil and paper game which dates from World War I. It was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game in the 1930s, and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967.
Cabbage Patch Kids are a line of dolls created by American art student Xavier Roberts in 1978. It was originally called "Little People". The original dolls were all cloth and sold at local craft shows, then later at Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia. The doll brand went on to become one of the most popular toy fads of the 1980s and one of the longest-running doll franchises in America.
Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a chequered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in parks, clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.
Cluedo, or Clue in North America, is a popular murder-mystery themed deduction board game originally published by Waddingtons in Leeds, England in 1949. It was devised by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitor's clerk and children's entertainer from Birmingham, England. It is published by the United States game and toy company Hasbro, which acquired its U.S. publisher Parker Brothers, and Waddingtons.
Dinky Toys were die-cast zamac miniature vehicles produced by Meccano Ltd - makers of Hornby Trains, named after founder Frank Hornby. The toy factory was at Binns Road, Liverpool, England.
English draughts (British English) or checkers (American English and Canadian English), also called American checkers or Straight checkers, is a form of the strategy board game draughts. It is played on an 8×8 square board (with sixty-four total squares) with twelve pieces on each side. The pieces move and capture diagonally. They may only move forward until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are crowned and may thereafter move and capture both backward and forward.
Fisher-Price is an American company that produces toys for infants and children, headquartered in East Aurora, New York. Fisher-Price has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Mattel since 1993.
G.I. Joe is a line of action figures produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier (U.S. Army), Action Sailor (U.S. Navy), Action Pilot (USAF), Action Marine (USMC) and later on, the Action Nurse.
Hasbro Inc. (formerly Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational toy and board game company. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The majority of its products are manufactured in East Asia.
Hello Kitty (full name Kitty White) is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, first designed by Yuko Shimizu. She is portrayed as a female white Japanese bobtail cat with a distinct beauty mark on her left arm and a red bow.
Hornby Railways is a British model railway brand. Its roots date back to 1901, when founder Frank Hornby received a patent for his Meccano construction toy. The first clockwork train was produced in 1920. In 1938, Hornby launched its first 00 gauge train. In 1964, Hornby and Meccano were bought by their competitor Tri-Ang, and sold on when Tri-ang went into receivership. In the 1980s Hornby Railways became independent.
Jenga is a game of physical and mental skill created by Leslie Scott, and currently marketed by Parker Brothers, a division of Hasbro. During the game, players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses.
Lego is a popular line of construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts.
A marble' is a small spherical toy usually made from glass, clay, steel, plastic or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about 1/2 inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.54 cm) in diameter, but they may range from less than 1/30 inch (0.111 cm) to over 3 inches (7.75 cm), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of games called marbles. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colours. In the North of England the objects and the game are called "taws", with larger taws being called bottle washers after the use of a marble in Codd-neck bottles.
Matchbox is a popular toy brand which was introduced by Lesney Products in 1953 and is now owned by Mattel, Inc. The brand was so named as the original die-cast Matchbox toys were sold in boxes similar in style and size to those in which matches were sold.
Mattel, Inc. is an American toy manufacturing company founded in 1945 with headquarters in El Segundo, California. In 2010, it ranked #387 on the Fortune 500. The products and brands it produces include Fisher-Price, Barbie dolls, Monster High dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, WWE Toys, and early-1980s video game systems.
Meccano Ltd was a British toy company established in 1908 by Frank Hornby in England to manufacture and distribute Meccano and other model toys and kits created by the company. During the 1920s and 1930s it became the biggest toy manufacturer in Britain and produced three of the most popular lines of toys in the twentieth century: Meccano, Hornby Trains and Dinky Toys.
Monopoly is an American-originated board game originally published by Parker Brothers. Subtitled "The Fast-Dealing Property Trading Game," the game is named after the economic concept of monopoly - the domination of a market by a single entity. It is produced by the United States game and toy company Hasbro. Players move around the game board buying or trading properties, developing their properties with houses and hotels, and collecting rent from their opponents, the ultimate goal being to drive them into bankruptcy.
Risk is a strategic board game, produced by Parker Brothers (now a division of Hasbro). It was invented by French film director Albert Lamorisse and originally released in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde ("The Conquest of the World") in France. Risk is a turn-based game for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the Earth, divided into forty-two territories, which are grouped into six continents. The object of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and in doing so, eliminate the other players. Players control armies with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls.
Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube", the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toy Corp. in 1980 via German businessman Tibor Laczi and Seven Towns founder Tom Kremer, and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes had been sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.
Rummikub (also known as Rummy-O, Rummycube, Rummyking, "Rummy-Q", Tile rummy and Rummy Tile) is a tile-based game for two to four players.
Scalextric is a toy brand for a range of slot car racing sets which first appeared in the late 1950s, as a creation of British firm Minimodels. The brand is currently owned and distributed by Hornby.
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a gameboard which is divided into a 15 x 15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words which, in crossword fashion, flow left to right in rows or downwards in columns. The words must be defined in a standard dictionary. Specified reference works (e.g., the Official Club and Tournament Word List, the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) provide a list of officially permissible words.
Snakes and Ladders is an ancient Indian board game regarded today as a worldwide classic. It is played between two or more players on a gameboard having numbered, gridded squares. A number of "ladders" and "snakes" are pictured on the board, each connecting two specific board squares.
Tomy Co., Ltd., Takara Tomy is a Japanese toy, children's merchandise and entertainment company created from the merger of two companies: Tomy (founded in 1924 as Tomiyama, changing the name to Tomy in 1963 and long-time rival, Takara (founded in 1955). Merged on 1 March 2006, the company has its headquarters in Katsushika, Tokyo.
Toys "R" Us, Inc. (stylized as Toys Я Us) is a dedicated toy and juvenile-products retailer founded in 1948 and headquartered in Wayne, New Jersey. The company operates more than 877 Toys "R" Us and Babies "R" Us stores in the United States, more than 685 international stores and over 170 licensed stores in 35 countries and jurisdictions.
The Transformers is a line of toys produced by the Japanese company Takara (now known as Takara Tomy) and American toy company Hasbro. The Transformers toyline was created from toy moulds mostly produced by Japanese company Takara in the toylines Diaclone and Microman. Other toy moulds from other companies such as Bandai were used as well. In 1984, Hasbro bought the distribution rights to the moulds and rebranded them as the Transformers for distribution in North America.
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. The game was created in December 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal's The Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press. After finding pieces of their Scrabble game missing, they decided to create their own game. With the help of John Haney and Ed Werner, they completed development of the game, which was released in 1982.
The yo-yo in its simplest form is an object consisting of an axle connected to two disks, and a length of string looped around the axle, similar to a slender spool. It is played by holding the free end of the string (usually by inserting one finger in a slip knot) allowing gravity or the force of a throw to spin the yo-yo and unwind the string (similar to how a pullstring works), then allowing the yo-yo to wind itself back to one's hand, exploiting its spin (and the associated rotational energy). This is often called "yo-yoing". First made popular in the 1920s, yo-yoing remains a popular pastime of many generations and cultures. It was first invented in ancient Greece.
