In 1860, Milton Bradley moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, and set up the state's first color lithography shop.

Deeply invested in the cause, his company began manufacturing educational items such as colored papers and paints.

His friend George Tapley bought the interest of the lost investors and took over as president of the Milton Bradley Company.

[6] Milton Bradley's company's involvement with kindergartens began with the production of "gifts", the term used by Froebel for the geometric wooden play things that he felt were necessary to properly structure children's creative development.

Bradley spent months devising the exact shades in which to produce these materials; his final choice of six pigments of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet would remain the standard colors for children's art supplies through the 20th century.

The company produced supplies that any grade school teacher could use, such as toy money, multiplication sticks, and movable clock dials.

These included Visit to the Gypsies, Word Gardening, Happy Days in Old New England, and Fortune Telling.

[2] Desperate to avoid bankruptcy, the board of directors persuaded James J. Shea, a Springfield businessman, to take over presidency of the company.

He began a major renovation of the Milton Bradley plant by burning old inventory that had been accumulating since the turn of the century.

With the outbreak of World War II, Milton Bradley started producing a universal joint created by Shea used on the landing gear of fighter planes.

Various companies acquired licenses to television shows for the purpose of producing all manner of promotional items including games.

Thanks to Johnny Carson's suggestive comments as Eva Gabor played the game on his show, Twister became a phenomenon.

In 1983, seeing the potential in the new Vectrex vector-based video game console, the company purchased General Consumer Electronics (GCE).

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Milton Bradley marketed a series of games (such as HeroQuest and Battle Masters) in North America that were developed in the United Kingdom by Games Workshop (GW) that drew heavily from GW's Warhammer Fantasy universe, albeit without explicit reference to the Warhammer product line.

[7] The 1990s saw the release of Gator Golf, Crack the Case, Mall Madness, and 1313 Dead End Drive.