In 1990, Parker Brothers released a new board game called "Careers for Girls" in which players could choose from six jobs: supermom, rock star, school teacher, fashion designer, animal doctor, and college graduate.
By contrast, the career options in the non-gendered version of Careers included things such as Ecology, Teaching, Sports, Computer Science, Space, Show Biz, Big Business, and Politics. (The game was invented in 1955, and the various career options changed over the years.)
Of course, the company got slammed for being sexist and soon discontinued the "for girls" version of the game, claiming a "lack of mass appeal."
The Big Game Hunter blog offers more background on the history of the Careers game and its original inventor, James Cooke Brown (science fiction author and creator of the artificial language, Loglan).
A 1930s party-planning manual for members of the American Communist Party, downloadable as a PDF here. Let's just say, those guys knew how to throw a cheap party.
Published in the late 1930s by the party's New York state branch and recently rediscovered by a Brandeis University historian, it's a 15-page illustrated tutorial in the art of ideologically correct fraternizing. Among the suggested high jinks: cutting editorials from The Daily Worker into pieces and having guests see who can put them back together fastest, or holding a mock convention on, say, nonintervention in Spain. "One guest is made chairman. Another is Chamberlain, another Leon Blum, a third Mussolini," the pamphlet cheerfully explains. Or why not try a round of anti-Fascist darts? "Draw a picture of Hitler, Mussolini, Hague or another Girdleresque pest. Put it on a piece of soft board with thumbtacks. Six throws for a nickel, and a prize if you paste Hague in the pants, or Trotsky in the eye," the pamphlet instructs.
Also, advertise "All the free beer you can drink!" but charge expensive admission at the door ("Yes, people will pay!"). And then:
Pour your beer in the center of the glass not down the inside. POURING IN THE MIDDLE GIVES MORE FOAM AND LESS LIQUID — STRETCHES EACH BARREL FURTHER.
"Droodles" sounds ugly, like "drool." And these jokes are fit only to entertain an eight-year-old. Excellent campaign to indicate quality of product and sophistication of audience.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.