Dozens of inspiring inventor stories show how timely ideas established businesses or expanded lines dramatically through creativity and imagination. For example, Scrabble was invented in 1931 by Alfred M. Butts, an out-of-work architect who was a lifelong devotee of anagrams and crossword puzzles. The game was originally called Crisscross Words and was renamed Scrabble in 1948. To date, over 100 million Scrabble games have been sold worldwide.

Trivial Pursuit was invented by three young Canadians in 1979. In the game’s first year on the market, Selchow and Righter, the game’s original U.S. manufacturer, sold 22 million sets at retail prices as high as $40. The next year, it sold 6 million copies, and the next, 5 million. Trivial Pursuit has sold more than 75 million games worldwide.

Remember Dr. Erno Rubik, the Hungarian engineer and mathematician who invented the Rubik’s Cube? During its three-year hot streak, this innocent-looking 2¼-inch puzzle with more than 43 quintillion possible combinations but only one true solution, sold an estimated 100 million authorized copies, plus another 50 million knock-offs and at least 10 million books explaining how to solve it.

Monopoly was brought to Parker Brothers in 1933 by the late Charles B. Darrow, who developed the game while he was unemployed during the Depression. It was initially rejected as having “52 fundamental errors,” but it was later published in 1935 and is now licensed in 33 countries and printed in 23 different languages. Over 300 million Monopoly games have been sold worldwide.

Crayola Crayons celebrated its 107th birthday in 2010. Alice Stead Binney conceived the name Crayola for her husband Edwin’s crayons in 1903. She derived it from the French word craie (“stick of color”) and the word oleaginous (“oily”). Each year, the company Binney and Smith produces more than 2 billion Crayola Crayons. That would be enough crayons to circle the globe four and a half times or produce a giant crayon 35 feet wide and 400 feet tall—100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. Kids ages 2 through 8 spend an average of 28 minutes a day coloring. The average child in the United States will wear down 730 crayons by age 10.

Cincinnati barber Merle Robbins came up with the card game Uno and licensed it to International Games in 1972. Today Uno, published by Mattel, is sold in 26 countries and is available in 12 languages, with sales of over 80 million units worldwide.

The Hula Hoop, introduced by Wham-O in 1958, set the standards by which all fads are measured. Within four months of its introduction, more than 25 million Hula Hoops were sold. The Hula Hoop was inspired by children’s bamboo exercise hoops from Australia.

A game invented by a wealthy Canadian couple to play aboard their yacht was so popular with their friends that they approached Edwin S. Lowe, most famous for publishing bingo games in the 1920s, to make samples of “The Yacht Game” for them to give as gifts. Lowe liked the game so much that he offered to buy the rights from the couple, and they agreed. He eventually changed the name of the game to Yahtzee. In 1973, Milton Bradley acquired the E.S. Lowe Company. Today Hasbro owns Milton Bradley.