The Game of Life

The Milton Bradley Company undertook to create and market as part of its centennial celebration an updated version of the game that Milton Bradley had first invented and marketed, The Checkered Game of Life. It was The Checkered Game of Life that had successfully launched the Milton Bradley enterprise. Perhaps the game makers at Milton Bradley, thinking somewhat magically, felt that since The Checkered Game of Life had proved an auspicious start for the company's first century, a modernized version might prove an equally fortuitous beginning for its second. Whatever the motivation—magical, commemorative, commercial, or likely a mixture of all three—it was apparent that a revision of the old Checkered Game was required. Although the Checkered Game had sold well in its first fifty years of production, its sales since 1910 had dropped steadily until by the later 1950's a marginal number of sets were being sold, mostly to a clientele of traditional and religious orientation.1

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