Portal:Toys/Selected article/6
The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement is a children's board game inspired by Christian morality. Players race about a sixty-six space spiral track depicting virtues and vices with their goal being The Mansion of Happiness at track's end. Instructions upon virtue spaces advance players toward the goal while those upon vice spaces force them to retreat. The Mansion Of Happiness was designed by Anne Abbott, a children's author and game designer. W. & S. B. Ives published the game in 1843, and it was republished by Parker Brothers in 1894 after George S. Parker & Co. bought the rights to the Ives games. The republication claimed The Mansion of Happiness was the first board game published in the United States of America; today, however, the distinction is awarded to Lockwood's Traveller's Tour games of 1822. The popularity of The Mansion of Happiness and similar moralistic board games was challenged in the last decades of the 19th century when the focus of games became materialism and competitive capitalistic behavior.