Monday, May 18, 2009

Oobi And Beyond


Yes. The legendary disaster. My grandfather thought he would be "With It" if he published "The Tiny Tim Game of Beautiful Things." Sadly, the "Youth of Today" weren't buying. Maybe if Rich Uncle Pennybags had married Miss Vicki on the Tonight Show they might have had something.

Tiny Tim never could figure out how to play it.


"Oobi" was an alternative postal system for the Love Generation, and even more of a flop than "The Tiny Tim Game of Beautiful Things." If I tried to explain this we would be here all day. Luckily Oobi has a website:
http://www.deuceofclubs.com/oobi/oobimail.htm


Tangential ancestry. Isaac Baker Woodbury is said to have been the third most popular composer of Victorian parlor songs, after Stephen Foster and George F. Root. He presented this bound collection of his sheet music to his sister Nancy, my several times great-grandmother.


Isaac was a prominent music educator. He was the first person to conduct Haydn's "Creation" in the New World, singing Adam's part himself. He composed the oratorio "The Founding of Jamestown" and the cantata "Washington." And after he died of tuberculosis, his reputation fell off the face of the earth.



And here I am, at the Toy Industry Hall of Fame dinner, with my mother, my grandmother, two aunts, two brothers, two presidents of Parker Brothers, and a centerpiece that looks like a sort of leafy cephalopod. And thus I pass from board game history.


Here's another nice mess you've gotten us into. Thanks to Michael W. Nolan for this 1930s promotional photograph.

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