Pick Up Sticks
Long before there was Operation
or video games, Pick Up Sticks was helping children around the world
develop hand-eye coordination. Easy to learn, but sometimes maddeningly
challenging, the deceptively simple game remains popular today for
exactly these reasons.
The date when Pick Up Sticks was invented is unclear, but it has
been traced back to the Native Americans, who played it with straws of
wheat and passed it on to English settlers back when the United States
was still known as “the 13 colonies.” As it was passed from generation
to generation, it developed into a game that was played with thin
wheat-straw shaped pieces of wood. There were usually 25 sticks, and
they were either painted with a spectrum of six colors or made from six
different shades of wood.
To play Pick Up Sticks, the players would pour the sticks into a
jumble on the ground. At this point, the players would take turns
trying to remove individual sticks from the pile, one at a time,
without disturbing the rest of the sticks in the pile. If a player
moved another stick, he forfeited his turn, and the next player would
take a shot at it. The process continued until all the sticks were
picked up. For variety, some variations of the game included a black
stick. If a player picked up this black stick, he could use it during
later turns to separate two sticks lying together or to flick one away
from another.
Once toys began to be manufactured, Pick Up Sticks became a staple
of toy lines because they were easy to manufacture and there were no
pesky merchandising rights to deal with. They remain a common sight at
toy stores, but are usually made with plastic instead of wood today
(for safety reasons, natch). As long as kids need a game of skill to
teach them coordination skills, Pick Up Sticks will continue to be one
of the reliable staples of the toy kingdom.
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