The middle photo is a corner of the manufacturing department. Each set is hand-crafted of real wood with a smooth finish, so this puzzle game is not only enjoyable to play, but beautiful to display. This strategy game is also challenging to master, which is why it’s one of the most beloved board games for adults. Ballard (at back, left) in his office at Ballard Manufacturing. The Chinese Checkers Game Set by Hey Play is one of the most fun, easy-to-learn family games. Each player selects 10 BEADs the colour of their choice. The images at bottom right appeared in an article entitled "Topeka Product Enjoying Nation-Wide Sales," which appeared in the Kansas Business Magazine for April 1938. Chinese Checkers is played on a star-shaped board with 121 points which are the play spaces. The winner was the first player to move all ten of his marbles from one point of the star to the point directly opposite by means of checkers-like jumps. As with Halma, from two to six players could play Star Checkers.
The need for a faster and more accurate method of parceling out the marbles led Ballard to invent a device that counted and dispensed them automatically.Ĭhinese checkers was not a new game it was a simplified variation of a European board game called Halma, which was developed around 1880 and had its own run of popularity in America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Ballard employed several workers just to count out the marbles for each game-10 each of six different colors. By the spring of 1938 the Ballard Manufacturing Company of Topeka was shipping out around 15,000 Star Checkers games a month (including 500,000 to 700,000 marbles) to Woolworth stores nationwide, with preparations underway to produce 4,000 sets daily to meet order demands. He had found success marketing products such as towel racks, potlifters, and cat-shaped wooden match holders.īut Star Checkers was perhaps Ballard's biggest success. This wasn't Ballard's first foray into the novelty business. Ballard called his Chinese Checkers knock-off the Star Checkers game.
A Topeka manufacturer took advantage of the nationwide fad by developing his own version of the game. In the 1930s a craze for the board game commonly known as Chinese Checkers swept across America.