Why did they change the yellow ball on Mouse Trap?

Asked by owenburnett (183

) June 3rd, 2011

One of my favorite board games ever is Mouse Trap. The one I had from the 80s has a large yellow ball that falls from a plank and a bathtub onto the seesaw that launches the diver. I bought a new one recently and I’m very upset they changed it so that it now has two metal balls instead of one large yellow and one small metal ball. Any idea why they did this?

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6 Answers

Could be a host of reasons.

Maybe they found the new ones are less likely to fall off course.

Maybe the company that made the old ones is out of business.

Maybe these ones are cheaper.

Maybe they found the old ones to contain some kind of hazardous material.

tedd (14078

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My guess is that they saw an opportunity to replace a hard-to-source item with one that they could easily find from multiple sources.

The old “bowling ball” was a 1 1/8” plastic sphere. That’s not an item that many manufacturers routinely spit out. Milton Bradley probably had to either have it made to spec, or make it themselves. The new version is a 5/8” metal ball bearing, which is easily available from a bajillion sources.

That kind of sourcing flexibility is important to manufacturers.

thorninmud (20495

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