Twister (game)

Twister is a game of physical skill produced by Milton Bradley Company and Winning Moves Games USA. It is played on a large plastic mat spread on the floor, featuring four rows of six large colored circles—red, yellow, green, and blue—with a spinner that directs players where to place a hand or foot. The game markets itself as "the game that ties you up in knots." The concept originated in 1964 with Reyn Guyer Sr., who owned and managed a design company called Reynolds Guyer Inc. Agency of Design, which made in-store displays for Fortune 500 companies. His son Reyn Guyer worked there too, and while devising a shoe polish box top promotion for a client, Johnson Wax, created a mat game called King's Footsie, in which players took off their shoes to play.

The close physical proximity of players leaning on each other generated tension and laughter. The Guyers pitched the idea to 3M, which declined, but they proceeded to develop a line of games based on the concept, hiring designer Charles Foley and artist Neil Rabens. Foley, a toy industry veteran, and Rabens, a product design artist, refined the game.

Rabens changed the squares to colored dots and added hand placement, while Foley arranged the dots in rows to entangle players more, added a spinner for a caller, and introduced elimination rules for touching the mat with an elbow, knee, or butt. The game, initially called Pretzel, was licensed to Milton Bradley on February 1, 1966. It was renamed Twister after discovering a trademark conflict.

Twister gained massive popularity after actress Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show on May 3, 1966, but also drew controversy, with competitors accusing Milton Bradley of selling "sex in a box," likely because it was the first popular American game to use human bodies as playing pieces. In 1966, Nintendo licensed the game for Japan as Twister Game. Hasbro acquired Milton Bradley in 1984, becoming Twister’s parent company. In 2023, Hasbro introduced Twister Air, an app-driven version using motion-tracking wearables and augmented reality, replacing the mat with digital gameplay on a connected device.