Features

When Reuben Klamer talks about collaborating with Art Linkletter to market the hula hoop and feed into a sweeping craze of the 1950s, the celebrity cachet is lost on the 40 business students before him.

But when the Fisher College of Business students are asked, “Who here has played the Game of Life?” every hand in the room shoots up.

In addition to his timeless board game that has sold more than 50 million copies, Klamer is the creator of more than 200 toys and responsible for introducing one of the most important innovations in that industry: unbreakable plastic.

Klamer, Class of 1944, has been inducted into the Toy Industry Association Hall of Fame and the Hasbro Inventor’s Hall of Fame and holds a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Toy and Game Inventor Expo.

The Canton, Ohio native lives in San Diego now. But he returns to Ohio State frequently to meet with students and soak up the atmosphere of a campus where he studied marketing. 

“It reawakened me when I came back here to campus for the first time. I love to expound on my thoughts in any case where it can help a student think right. It’s wonderful.”

The immense buildup of the university since those days can be overwhelming, Klamer says. But some sites remain the same as they did 70 years ago, including eager students crossing the Oval on their way to class and his distraction-free study nook.

“Orton Hall was my favorite place,” Klamer says. “There were too many pretty girls in the main library!”

Reuben, joined by his fraternity brothers, moving out of the fraternity house. (seated, front center)

Klamer was in a campus-area restaurant with friends when news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor crackled across the radio. As president of Sigma Alpha Mu, he helped the fraternity move out of their quarters on Iuka Avenue.

“We had a nice house – large, accommodating,” he says. “The Army wanted our house. … So we moved all of our stuff and let them in.”

Meanwhile, Klamer was preparing to enlist in the Navy. To pass the physical, he needed to expand his lung capacity. He ran the steps of Ohio Stadium day after day until he could pass.

After surviving a kamikaze attack and other action in the Pacific theatre, Klamer returned to the U.S. and started a career in marketing with a plastics manufacturer. “They could make anything, but they needed a product for their machines.”

He was wandering through a department store’s toy section one day when he overheard a mother fearfully reprimand her son, “Put that down! It’s plastic!" 

Days later, he watched a television announcer extoll the value of a plastic bottle of shampoo. He threw it on the floor, and it just bounced.

“I need that plastic for that woman!” Klamer recalls thinking. “I want to use that material to make toys that won’t shatter.”

What resulted was the use of polyethylene – or unbreakable plastic – in toys. Klamer helped develop and market the Big Poly line of toys for the company and, as a result, revolutionized generations of children’s playthings.

Identifying a need and creating a solution, Klamer tells the business students, was critical in his career. “Be alert. You don’t have to think about being a particular thing. Just look around you, and (ideas) come naturally.” 

Seeing an advertisement for Milton Bradley Co. crayons, Klamer asked for a meeting with their leadership. He went in to pitch an art center and left with a challenge.

“They wanted a game celebrating their 100^th anniversary,” he says. “I told them I can try. That’s my personal slogan: I’ll try.”

On a tour of the company’s archives, inspiration struck. He spotted an 1860 game, The Checkered Game of Life. He seized the word “life” and set to work on building a theme out of that.

Klamer attributes the game’s success over the last 50-plus years to its simplicity.  He says, “It’s a down-to-earth game, and it attracts down-to-earth people." 

At 92, Klamer is still drawing on the power of observation to create, saying it keeps his mind sharp. In his excitement at meeting with students, his advisors have to remind him not to disclose proprietary information on forthcoming products. 

He laughs as he tells the students, “Forget what I just said. I’m not doing a damn thing!”

Returning to inspire business students, Klamer says, is invigorating. He encourages them to reach out to CEOs and others at the pinnacles of their careers because people genuinely want to help a student.

“They’re fresh and new. They’re ready to go,” he says. “There’s something special about students.”

Share Success with the Game of Life