Operation, the anxiety-inducing board game where you use tweezers to remove plastic bones from a naked man, was invented in 1964 by an industrial design student named John Spinello.

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Operation, the anxiety-inducing board game where you use tweezers to remove plastic bones from a naked man, was invented in 1964 by an industrial design student named John Spinello. He sold the patent for a mere five hundred dollars to an eccentric toy inventor, waiving his rights to any future royalties, which meant he earned absolutely zero passive income while the game sold over forty million copies worldwide. It is a tragically poetic outcome for a game entirely centered around the American healthcare system: you do a highly stressful medical procedure, and some corporate middleman immediately pockets all the cash while you suffer. Spinello didn't even get a free copy of the game until decades later, ultimately requiring a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his own real-life oral surgery in 2014. The irony of the Operation guy being unable to afford a real operation is so darkly hilarious that it legitimately feels like a discarded storyline from a bleak dystopian satire!