Peter Coddle’s Trip To New York

Found! An early Parker Brothers game

I discovered a ragged little box in a cupboard in my grandparents’ home in White Head, N.S. Aside from the wonderful illustration, what caught my eye in its lower corner were the words “Parker Brothers. Salem, Mass. U.S.A.”

What? THE Parker Brothers? In the witch capital of the continent?

Yes! Peter Coddle is one of the earliest games from the Parker Brothers, who grew to fame with Tiddledy-winks, Monopoly, Risk, Clue, the Ouija Board, Trivial Pursuit and even the Nerf Ball!

Peter Coddle’s Trip To New York dates from the early 1900s. A Feltmate family niece, Essie MacKenzie had emigrated from White Head N.S. to “the Boston states” c.1905. Essie was a fun-loving type as this photo will attest. In the lower corner she has written, “Hello, come on up.”

Essie lived and worked in Lynn, Massachusetts, about five miles from Salem and I have no doubt that it was she who sent Peter Coddle to “the folks back home”, along with a couple of other Parker Brothers games that were in the cupboard.

George Parker started making games in 1883 when he was only 16. He was tired of the dull preachy games of Puritan Massachusetts that were designed to teach moral lessons. How about The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement? That was published in Salem way back in 1843 and it was on a library shelf in George’s uncle’s home. George wanted pure fun and silliness – although I do notice that the Parker Brothers republished The Mansion of Happiness in 1894, billing it as the “first Board Game ever published in America”. He was not one to miss out on a marketing opportunity!

But in 1883 when he started out, George printed up 500 copies of his first game (called Banking), sold them all and netted $80. He was very good at developing and selling but he knew his limitations and was smart enough to bring in his brother Charles for the production and finance parts. Later their brother Edward joined them. George rented their first storefront in their hometown of Salem for $12.50 a month. The company stayed in Salem until 1991 and remained family-owned until 1968!

The New England Historical Society tells us that one of the company’s earliest games was called Billy Bumps Goes to Boston. I suspect that Peter Coddle’s Trip to New York is along the same line. Peter Coddle is very much like Mad Libs – a game that my son played a lot as a kid. Mad Libs was “invented” in 1953. Each short story in a Mad Libs booklet is missing keywords. One player asks for words in answer to “a place”, or a “part of the body”, an “animal” and so on. Once s/he has the list, the story can be read aloud with these random words filling in the blanks. The result is weird and wonderful nonsense.

In their entertaining “life story”, the inventors of Mad Libs seem completely unaware that this game had ever existed before their 1950s version. But there was a Victorian parlour game called Consequences that was similar, and Peter Coddle’s Trip builds on that.

Unlike the many stories in Mad Libs, there is only one story in Peter Coddle, the country bumpkin who makes his way to the Big Apple – one story full of blanks waiting to be filled, and dozens of words ready to fill them. Hilarity ensues. As the Directions for Playing point out, “As the cards never come twice in the same order, an endless and comical variation in the narrative is secured.” You can count on it!

And you can also click on the images below to read Peter’s story.

I was surprised to see on the site boardgamegeek.com that there were many different versions of Peter Coddle’s Trip To New York, all with different cover graphics and different publishers! Milton Bradley, a game company over in Springfield, Massachusetts, published a version in 1890 and a great many editions thereafter, but between 1890 and 1900, Selchow & Righter, J.H.Singer and the McLoughlin Brothers, all in New York, the National Game Company in Australia (!) and our friends the Parker Brothers in Salem came out with their own versions of Peter Coddle’s Trip To New York.

I have not been able to find my own version with its wonderful cover graphic online. The only Parker Brothers edition of the game that shows up is this one (on the left), in which the clothing and style looks somehow earlier than my version on the right.

The other Parker Brothers games in my grandparents’ cupboard are Mrs Casey Wants to Know, and Rook. By the time of Mrs. Casey, the company is Parker Brothers Inc. of Salem, New York and London. The player who answers nosy Mrs. Casey’s many questions must keep an absolutely straight face while answering, as the other players do their best to make him/her crack up. If s/he fails, s/he becomes the questioner.