9 Board Games From the 1960s Still Sold Today, From ‘Twister’ to ‘Operation’

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Walk through any big toy aisle and you’ll spot boxes that look a lot like the ones your parents or grandparents owned. Some have had tidy redesigns, but the core ideas are the same. A few of them are now more than sixty years old.

The 1960s were a busy decade for tabletop play, with plastic manufacturing, television advertising and a growing family market all lining up. These nine games came out of that era and, in one form or another, remain available to buy.

Twister

Twister (saeru, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Twister (saeru, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Twister arrived in 1966 from Milton Bradley, built around a plastic mat of colored circles and a spinner. It was designed by Reyn Guyer’s team and used the players’ own bodies as the game pieces, which was unusual at the time. Early retailers reportedly resisted it, and Sears was among those worried about its suggestive reputation.

A famous appearance on The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor playing it in 1966, is widely credited with turning it into a hit. Today it’s sold by Hasbro, which has kept the original idea nearly untouched. Few games have changed so little in six decades.

Operation

Operation (Image Credits: Pexels)
Operation (Image Credits: Pexels)

Operation first hit shelves in 1965, with a cartoon patient named Cavity Sam and a pair of tweezers. Players remove odd plastic ailments without touching the metal edges, or the buzzer sounds and his nose lights up. The concept came from a University of Illinois student, John Spinello, who is often reported to have…

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Author : Matthias Binder

Publish date : 2026-10-08 11:58:00

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