Poster and Game Board

The Office Boy.
Salem, Massachusetts, 1889
Color lithograph game board
Rare Book & Special Collection Division (107D.1)

Robert E. Peterson's Cheap Second Hand Bookstore
Philadelphia: n.d.
Lithograph poster
Parker Brothers
Rare Book & Special Collection Division (108.9)

Parker Brothers produced the 1889 board game Office Boy during the heyday of Horatio Alger's popular stories of plucky lads reaching success through hard work and determination. The player can advance from stock boy to sweeping out and on to head of sales, trying to avoid carelessness, which will send him back to reprimand. The lucky winner becomes head of the firm. The poster advertises a Philadelphia bookseller carrying children's books.