“Playing By Different Rules” Looks to Be Fun
Amazon reports that my copy of the 1988 book, Playing By Different Rules*, has shipped, and with any luck at all it will reach me before next week’s trip. This look at the Parker Brothers/Kenner merger of the eighties looks to be a great read, as the sample at Google’s books subsite shows.
The book’s conversational style — easy to read yet still packed with info — is my favorite sort of non-fiction to read, and with my constant search for the reasons why the toy industry is what it is today makes this a book I’m very much looking forward to reading. Will it be a fun read? Looks like a “yes” answer will come, but even more importantly is that this book covers a significant event that helped make Hasbro what it is today. Just try to imagine a Hasbro of today that doesn’t own Monopoly . . . or a world in which Mattel had been the ones to acquire Kenner/Parker Brothers in the nineties.
It is amazing how much the toy industry has consolidated over the last three decades.
Related articles
- Hasbro is way cooler than Mattel (money.cnn.com)
- Spotted Online – The New Yorker Looks at “The Trouble With Toys” (battlegrip.com)
- Mattel’s Bounce-Off Game Triggers Cuponk! Flashbacks (battlegrip.com)