Barrel of Monkeys

It is ‘more fun than a barrel of monkeys’.

Barrel of Monkeys is a game or toy that contains plastic linkable monkeys and a container that they are held in.
The main object of the Barrel of Monkeys game is to make the longest monkey chain by linking the arms, before dropping any.
Barrel of Monkeys was invented in 1965 by Leonard Marks, who came from New York’s Roslyn, in the United States, who is said to have sold the game to Lakeside Toys around that time.
Barrel of Monkeys was most likely an improvement on a similar form of entertainment of detachable hooks and links, that was possibly first invented in 1953 by Lawrence Reed from the United States, and was patented in 1955.
It is believed that ‘Barrel of Monkeys’ was originally to be named ‘Barrel of Fun’, but due to copyright issues it was named after a well known phrase.

The monkeys in the Barrel of Monkeys game were originally, until 1968, stored in cardboard cylinders, but this was changed to a plastic barrel.
Barrel of Monkeys traditionally contains twelve monkeys, though twenty-four is the barrel’s capacity, and the monkeys are generally coloured similar to the barrel – red, blue, green or yellow.
Barrel of Monkeys is manufactured by the Milton Bradley Company, which in 2014 was owned by the game and toy corporation Hasbro.
Two Barrel of Monkeys’ monkeys are said to be able to be linked in eighty different ways, using arms, legs, heads and the like, and they can been used in 3D models to create polyhedral chemical structure models of viruses and proteins.
In 2011, Barrel of Monkeys was given the 53rd place in the ‘All-TIME 100 Greatest Toys’ list.

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