Rueben Klamer obit

Reuben Klamer, invented Milton Bradley’s Game of Life, dies at 99

 

He was not on the list.

Reuben Klamer, the inventor of Milton Bradley’s popular The Game of Life and a toy industry hall-of-famer, died Tuesday at his home in La Jolla, California. He was 99.

“He was a fabulous man. Even at 99 years old he still had the twinkle in his eyes,” said longtime friend George Burtch, a retired vice president from Milton Bradley successor Hasbro. “I believed that until the day he passed he still had one more product to sell. He was remarkable person.”

Klamer participated in a Game of Life themed Chefs for Jimmy cancer fundraiser in 2013 in Agawam.

A World War II vet, Klamer was an advertising and promotions person when he visited Milton Bradley in Springfield in 1960 to pitch a hobby and craft kit to president and CEO James J. Shea Jr.

Shea told him the company wasn’t interested in the craft kit, Burtch, who was once in charge of inventor relations, said. But Shea said Milton Bradley did need a game to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the original Milton Bradley’s first successful game called The Checkered Game of Life.

“Reuben went back to the West Coast and started scribbling ideas on a napkin,” Burtch said. “He came back. Shea loved it. Here we sit 61 years later and it’s still a viable brand,”

A brand that was lovingly tended. Burtch said Klamer was unique among game inventors in that he had a right of approval over his invention.

Any changes — like a marketing tie-in or adding some new tiles — had to go through Klamer.

“George, I don’t think we are going to do that,” Burtch recalled the older man saying. “But if he saw the opportunity, he’d OK it. He was a businessman.”

All the more fitting for a man whose creation taught kids the right lessons about saving, investing, marriage and getting an education.

Still in Hasbro’s lineup and still made at the former Hasbro plant — now Cartamundi — in East Longmeadow.

Klamer also designed props for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” and for the original “Star Trek” pilot. He was the inventor of Fisher Price Preschool Trainer Skates, Gaylord the Walking Dog, Busy Blocks, the game of “Summit”.

He also popularized the use of a durable plastic, polyethylene, as a toy material. Prior to this, plastic toys shattered easily.

Klamer was born on June 20, 1922, to Romanian Jewish immigrants, Rachel (Levenson) and Joseph Klamer. He grew up in Canton, Ohio, He studied social sciences at George Washington University and received a bachelor’s in business administration from The Ohio State University.

He completed electives in engineering at the University of Michigan after joining the Navy V-7 Program and graduated from the U.S. Navy Midshipman School at Northwestern University. He distinguished himself in combat as an officer in the. Navy amphibious landing forces in the Pacific during World War II, according to an obituary prepared by People of Play, a Chicago-based industry group.

After the war, he created a means of shipping fashions by air without wrinkling them and branched out to advertising and from there to the games and toys.

Klamer is survived by four of his children: Jeffrey Klamer, Pamela Klamer Singer, Andrew Klamer and Jonathan Klamer (Jacqui); grandchildren Jasmine Singer, Cameron Singer and Atlas Klamer; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews. His eldest son, Joel, died in 2016, according to the obit.