Cootie

Cootie wants to get back to her roots. She wants to visit the Hennepin History Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota (which is close to Golden Valley where the Cootie game was created). Along the way she would like to have her picture taken at other museums.

As a secondary goal she hopes to have her picture taken by Aggravation de l'Espace (The Cootie Sculpture) in Cincinnati, Ohio.

COOTIE GAME: William H. (Herb) Schaper, a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office, and avid Minnesota angler who was enamored with bugs, whittled the first COOTIE out of wood in 1948. The Cootie game was introduced in the fall of 1949. Dayton's took the first dozen games on consignment and had sold 5,592 sets by the end of 1950. In the first years Schaper built 40,000 wooden COOTIE games by hand. Three years later, more than 1,200,000 were produced with the aid of machinery. Cootie quickly went national and was an instant success, unmatched in the industry for some 40 years (until the early 1990s and the success of action figures). By 1978, more than 30 million COOTIE games had entertained children worldwide. Milton Bradley acquired COOTIE and other Schaper classics in 1987.

By the mid-1960s, Schaper Manufacturing was selling more than 25 different games from its headquarters in Golden Valley. Curiously, several of Schaper's games had insect themes, including Ants in the Pants, Tickle Bee, Inch Worm, Guess'n Bee and Tumble Bug.

AGGRAVATION DE L'ESPACE Painted bright red, this steel sculpture was originally erected in 1983 at the steps to City Hall. Ironically, it became, like its name implies, an aggravation for pedestrians and was moved to a more appropriate location on Central Parkway because people complained they were running into the piece. Created by artist Jean Boutellis, the sculpture is also known as Aggravation of Space and Cootie. The cootie nickname came about because of the leggy entomological look of sculpture, according to the sculpture file in the Smithsonian database.