A shoe-polish promotion in Minnesota.

Twister started as an advertising idea. Smithsonian magazine reported in May 2026 that Reyn Guyer, working for his father’s company, conceived the game as promotional material for a back-to-school campaign for Johnson Wax shoe polish. He pictured players standing and moving on a mat printed with coloured spaces, chosen to show off the shades of the polish, while trying to block one another. The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, which runs the National Toy Hall of Fame, dates that shoe-polish idea to 1964, and describes it as a game with a mat on the floor and people serving as the playing pieces.

Johnson Wax turned the promotion down, Smithsonian reported, but Guyer kept the idea and hired two men to help refine it: Charles Foley and Neil Rabens, whom the museum describes as a toy designer and an artist. Mirek Stolee, the museum’s curator for board games and puzzles, told Smithsonian that according to his research Rabens’s main contribution was having players put their hands as well as their feet on the board, while Foley is credited with lining up the dots of each colour in rows instead of scattering them across the mat.

The three called their game Pretzel. English Wikipedia says Guyer’s company signed a licensing agreement with the Milton Bradley Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, on 1 February 1966. When it came time to manufacture the game, the name was changed: Yve Colby, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, told the magazine that it became Twister to distinguish it from a dog toy called Pretzel. The game was patented on 8 July 1969, Smithsonian reported; Wikipedia gives the application date as 14 April 1966, in the names of Foley and Rabens.

Four colours, a spinner and a white mat.

The product is little more than a graphic. English Wikipedia describes a large plastic mat with four rows of six coloured circles, each row a different colour — red, yellow, green and blue — and a spinner that tells players where to put a hand or a foot. Smithsonian quoted the museum’s Colby on what stood out to Milton Bradley: the game’s minimal components, simply a mat, a spinner and the players themselves. The Strong museum says Milton Bradley used a printer at General Tire, a firm that made shower curtains, to print the large colour spots on the plastic mats.

The early packaging had a job to do. Smithsonian reported that when Twister went on sale in April 1966 it was not well received, that some critics called it “sex in a box”, and that Sears turned it down; the original box showed conservatively dressed adults playing the game, a choice the magazine says was made to answer claims that it was too provocative. Advertising later sold it as “the game that ties you up in knots”, a line Smithsonian notes ran through its commercials.

Television changed the story. On 3 May 1966, Smithsonian reported, Johnny Carson and the actress Eva Gabor played Twister on The Tonight Show. The magazine quoted Guyer’s 2014 account to the Guardian: Mel Taft, head of development at Milton Bradley, arranged for the game to be played on the show, and the next morning Taft found himself in a long queue at Abercrombie & Fitch, which was rumoured to have Twister for sale. The Strong museum adds that a public relations firm had placed the game in Carson’s line-up, that Milton Bradley had meanwhile decided to cancel production after Sears refused to carry it, that the show went ahead because it never got word, and that the next day the one New York store stocking the game sold out. Milton Bradley, the museum says, then reconsidered production.

Party games and their owners.

Toy and game packaging does a different job from most retail packaging, because the box is often the first thing a child sees and the last thing an adult reads before buying. Many toys are sold in a window box, a carton with a cut-out panel covered in clear film so that the product itself can be seen on the shelf. Card and party games more often come in a tuck box, a small folded carton with a flap that tucks in at the top, sized to fit in a pocket or a drawer.

Board games and larger toys tend to use a two-piece box with a printed lid, and the lid has long carried photography or illustration of people playing, so that the picture shows how the game or toy is used as much as what is inside. A logo on a toy or game box usually has to work at several sizes: across the front of a lid, along a narrow side panel when the box is stacked, and on the pieces, cards or the product itself.

Each guide that follows looks at how one name has been carried on its boxes, logos and advertising over time, and who has owned that name along the way.

From Milton Bradley to Hasbro.

Twister moved to a new owner with its maker. The Providence Journal reported in December 1984 that Hasbro, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, had acquired Milton Bradley that September, forming a combined company then called Hasbro Bradley Inc. Hasbro has owned the game, along with the rest of the Milton Bradley catalogue, since that purchase.

The game kept a public life of its own. The Strong museum says large-scale matches on college campuses in the 1980s helped it along. Smithsonian reported that on 2 May 1987 students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, organised by the yearbook staff working with Milton Bradley, staged a mass game for Guinness World Records, and that a local car dealership painted Twister dots on cars in its lot to promote the event. In 2015 the Strong museum inducted Twister into its National Toy Hall of Fame.

The 50th anniversary in 2016 brought the game back to The Tonight Show, Smithsonian reported, when Jimmy Fallon and the actress Kristen Stewart played a variant of their own. The magazine also lists later versions including Twister Splash, a yard game with a water-spraying mat, and Twister Air, a mat-less, app-enabled augmented-reality version. The Strong museum says the game has been adapted for colour-blind and legally blind players. A photo caption in the same Smithsonian article links Guyer to another Hasbro name, the Nerf ball.

For a design guide, Twister shows how a brand can live almost entirely in its product: four flat colours on a white field, repeated in rows. Compare Uno, a card game built on the same four colours, and Play-Doh, another Hasbro brand. For this guide we use red, yellow, green and blue on white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Twister’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.