Did you know the original name of the Twister board game was Pretzel! Well if you want more facts on Twister, you’ve come to the right place!
Twister was based on a project that inventor Reyn Guyer was working on, which was a promotion for Johnson’s shoe polish company. Guyer created a polka dot paper mat and then thought it would be better as a game. He tested this with a group of office workers which were divided into two teams and called it ‘Pretzel’. The Milton Bradley Company (MB) noticed this invention and within a year released it as a new game called Twister and claimed it as their own idea.
‘Twister’ was invented by Charles Foley and Neil Rabens in April 1966 and was the first game invented that required people to use their bodies as playing pieces. When Twister was featured on ‘The Tonight Show’, where the presenter, Johnny Carson, climbed over Eva Gabor who was on her hands and knees wearing a short skirt, Milton Bradley (MB) was accused of selling an adult game by its competitors. More than three million copies of Twisters were sold during its first year of release.
Twister was very popular with both children and adults because the game needed both skill and action. In 1987, a record-breaking 4,160 people tied themselves up in knots playing a Twister marathon at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Even to this day it is still popular with college students as they make a nice addition to parties.
The world record for the largest game of Twister took place on 30th April 2007, where over one hundred people turned up and two hundred Twister mats were used. As more people lost, mats were removed until eventually it was the last five people on one mat. The game was a tie between two people as they fell at the same time.