A Wogglebug Game

Here's something new - or actually very old - that I don't think has been seen before. For a long time, the first recorded commercially produced Oz game has been the Wogglebug Game of Conundrums, presented by Parker Brothers Games in 1905. But here's a game from a year earlier, also featuring the Wogglebug.

The Woggle Bug Card Game was produced in 1904 by the New Idea Game Co. in Chicago - home of the Oz books. It's a complicated activity involving sequencing colors and numbers. The previously known Game of Conundrums is only Oz related due to its name and the use of the Wogglebug character on the box, but this Woggle Bug Game uses four suites of playing cards featuring Oz characters - the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Wogglebug.

1904 was the year of L. Frank Baum's Queer Visitors From the Land of Oz newspaper comic page, and the characters seen in this game are clearly based on the drawings of Walt McDougall, illustrator of the comic.

Sadly, all I have is the instruction sheet (part of which is shown here) - the cards are long gone. But there is enough graphic material on the sheet to reconstruct the cards... so perhaps it may make a reappearance!