This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/1/2025
Crystal Gazer. A Barrel of Fun, ca. 1940s. Screen-printed hardboard Ouija board. Talking Board Directions label to verso. 15 x 19". Small loss to lower right corner, else very good.
“While the murky origins of many Chicago-based wartime manufacturers seems at times to have been designed to hide intellectual property theft in a highly-competitive environment, there are many instances of Chicago-based talking board manufacturers offering models that adopted some variation of “Ouija" in their name, only to abruptly shift to more generic names and bylines. Despite there being no evidence of legal proceedings on trademark infringement from Ouija's manufacturer, William Fuld, the rarity of boards bearing these imprints compared to their more common generic counterparts in the modern collectible market points to a subtle sea change among Chicago's novelty manufacturers to avoid any such legal threat. This may very well be the case for the relative rarity of A Barrel of Fun's We-Ja Girl board compared to its nearly-identical counterpart, the Crystal Gazer, which the company might have introduced to sidestep the possibility of trademark infringement their sound-alike model might have otherwise invited."
– Brandon Hodge, The Mysterious Planchette