Ed's Stratego Site - A Short History of Stratego

Two important events occurred in 1961. One, I was born. Two, and much more importantly, the Milton Bradley Company first produced Stratego!

The game was actually trademarked (#695.583 ) in the USA by Milton Bradley a year earlier, in 1960, but distribution didn't begin until Milton Bradley copyrighted the game in the USA under the Berne & Universal Copyright Conventions in 1961.

It's easy to tell if you have a 1961 Stratego set. All sets from 1961 have the words

INTRODUCING
The Popular
OLD WORLD GAME
of SKILL and STRATEGY

in a white box on the cover.

It was just for a year and a half, for all of 1961 and a portion of 1962, that Milton Bradley produced the sets with the wooden pieces you see here.

(Note: The brown Fine Edition set, shown below, which I understand came out in 1963, also came with wooden pieces.)

For many weeks earlier this year I've was monitoring the auctions on eBay for these wooden piece sets and the bids were usually in the $125.00+ range!

If you shop around, you can often find them for half that price.

A 1961 Stratego set will also have a
cardboard insert that looks like this:

Notice the cardboard insert with this 1962 set. The photo is quite small, but the photographs you see are promotions for the game Summit and Civil War that Milton Bradley also produced.

I have a few 1961 sets that also have this carboard insert.

This cardboard insert predates the one shown in the next photograph.

In late 1962 Milton Bradley started manufacturing sets with plastic pieces.

I'm a big fan of wood pieces, so as much as I hate to admit it, the plastic pieces were better suited for actual gameplay, for two reasons.

One, the plastic pieces did not topple over like the wooden ones were often prone to do. The plastic pieces have a wider extended base and do not tip. If you accidentally bumped your board, you could usually expect several of the wooden pieces to topple over. This often revealed the identity of the piece and arguments often ensued. "Hey! That's no fair!"

Two, at least with the wooden pieces that belonged to a neighborhood chum I played with as a kid, a keen eye could detect very distinctive markings in some of the pieces. Once both players realized the "blue piece with the small, dark notch was a Bomb" that piece may have just as well been played face up!

If a person did not know any better, they might believe this set pre-dated all of the sets shown above, because the board looks so plain and simple. However, this is the FINE Edition. Milton Bradley regularly issued "Fine Editons" of their board games and Stratego was no exception.

The dimensions of this box (9" x 12") are much smaller than the 1962 set shown above. The board also came in a tan color, as shown below. The tan board came with wood pieces. The blue board shown above came with plastic pieces.

This is what my first Stratego game box looked like!

I'm not sure what year this artwork first appeared, but I would have purchased my game in the early '70s, so it was at least being produced by then.

Update: I've been informed this box cover
artwork begin about 1967.

Notice the difference I discovered with a few of the pieces. The wooden pieces and board you see below are from my recently purchased 1962 set. As you can see, the Captain is showing a left profile...

... and here, with my set from the '70s, the Captain is showing a right profile on both the board and piece. I have no idea why Milton Bradley decided to make this change.

This is also true for the General, the Miner, and the Scout... the 1962 set shows each of these pieces with a different profile than my 1970s set.

In 1975, the outside of the box changed and looked like this.

In the photograph below you can see the rules to the game were still being printed on the box cover.

I believe this was when the playing board was slightly altered. Notice how this board looks different than the boards in the previous three photographs. This board only shows the Flag, the Marshal, the Spy, and the Bomb. The above boards display all men.

I played so many games with the original pieces that it was hard for me to accept these. The numbers on each piece are slightly larger... but to me the image of the officers are inferior.

(I've since warmed up to these pieces a little more, but my personal preference is still with the original design.)

For more on the history of Stratego, be sure
to read the many posts in the Message Board!