Card game:The Trolley Came Off

Parker Brothers' humorous party game "The Trolley Came Off" is a late 19th century card game with many attributes of contemporary games we might recognize today. A reading game, The Trolley is similar to the game Peter Coddles as one player reads a story supplied with the game. When the reader reaches an underlined word, the player holding the card with that word must stand, turn around, and bow. the play advances around the table, with nonsensical humor and physical action increasing with each underlined word. A version of musical chairs occurrs when the reader reads "the trolley came off" (meaning off its track,) and the one player left standing becomes the reader. The game relates to other word games of its era such as anagrams but also to contemporary word games such as Boggle and musical chairs, and even charades.