Twister was heavily criticized and almost pulled from the market in 1966 because competitors accused it of being sex in a box, which sounds like a compliment but was genuinely a scandal at the time.

A closer look

Twister was heavily criticized and almost pulled from the market in 1966 because competitors accused it of being sex in a box, which sounds like a compliment but was genuinely a scandal at the time. The idea of a game requiring teenagers and adults to tangle their limbs together on a vinyl mat horrified pearl-clutching conservative critics who were used to wholesome, non-physical parlor games. Milton Bradley was on the verge of canceling the production completely due to the PR nightmare, but then Johnny Carson played it on The Tonight Show with the incredibly glamorous Eva Gabor. The sight of the king of late-night television intimately tangled up with a Hollywood starlet caused sales to explode overnight, proving once again that moral outrage is absolutely the best marketing strategy ever invented for an otherwise boring piece of plastic dotted with primary colors