Is This the First Dice Tower?

I continue my tour of the 70's with the Parker Brothers game, The Inventors.

This is a roll and move affair and Monopoly done right in my opinion. The idea of the game is that you move around the track collecting these odd, old inventions and get them patented and make as much money as you can! The inventions are of 3 types A inventions, B inventions and C inventions, the A inventions being the best and potentially the most profitable.

The highlight of the game is using the Dice machine, which is a dice tower and also serves to attach a patent claim clip onto the invention. These patent claim clips are valued at 0, 1 and 2 and the higher the value the more money you make on the Royalty track. The Royalty track is the inner track on the board where you score the big royalties on your invention based on its value. The value is determined by the number on the patent claim.

This game allows other players to leech onto your inventions by being a Silent partner and in some cases your inventions can be stolen as well. These effects are produced by the Eureka cards, which you could compare to Chance and Community Chest in Monopoly.

I say this is Monopoly done right because it has a built in time limit because once the last patent Claim Clip has been taken the game is over. So if you enjoy an occassional game of Monopoly but don't have the time, this is a good choice. Speaking of the Patent Claim Clips, I find the above picture odd because the clips are plastic. My edition has nice metal Patent Claim Clips.

These are actual old inventions too, and some are unbelieveable, like the Automatic Hat Tipper.
I myself was so inspired by these creative inventions that I have been trying to get a patent on one of my inventions, the Automatic Cube Grinder, which grinds up wooden cubes from Euro games into sawdust when mixed with manure makes a fine mulch.

I

Okay, Steve, how well does the game play?

--Mike L.

I had this game as a little kid. Don't remember much about it except that the Dice roller(that's what I called it) was really cool.

Games from the 60's and 70's have a certain flavor you just don't see today. Today we look for the game with a good or novel game mechanic. Back then it seems any sort of gimmick was worth a try.