Operation Board Game
The buzzing, tweezers-and-plastic-patient game that's earned at least $40 million in sales — after Milton Bradley bought the rights from its inventor for just $500.
Operation is the steady-hand game where players use metal tweezers to remove plastic "ailments" from a cartoon patient's body cavities without touching the metal edges and triggering the buzzer. It's a genuinely simple mechanical toy that's stayed continuously popular since the 1960s.
A student project that got bought for almost nothing
Operation was designed by a University of Illinois industrial design student, and Milton Bradley acquired the rights to manufacture and sell it for just $500 — a strikingly small sum against the at least $40 million the game went on to generate over its production history, and a similar story to several other classic toys where the original inventor saw little of the eventual payoff.
The core mechanic — a buzzer that punishes an unsteady hand — has proven durable enough that Hasbro has released dozens of licensed editions over the decades themed around everything from Star Wars to The Simpsons, without ever needing to change the underlying gameplay.
