Meet the Man Who Designed the Hottest Games for Girls in the '90s

Board game designer Michael Gray has an extensive resume in the game world (between 1978 and 1981 alone, he designed 36 of them for Milton Bradley), but in a recent video interview with Great Big Story it was two creations in particular—Dream Phone and Mall Madness—that took him down memory lane.

"It was a bunch of guys that did it, but that's OK," Gray said of Dream Phone, a dating-themed board game that was targeted to pre-teen girls. The main component of the game—and the starting point for the design team—was a pink electronic telephone, which Gray says was an "elegant and beautiful thing" at the time.

In reflecting on Mall Madness, Gray admits that his views on shopping before making the game were very different: "If I'm going to make a game about shopping—what I know about shopping—you just go get what you need and go back to the car. Later it was pointed out to me that that's kind of not the way ladies shop."

To hear more of Gray's thoughts on these classics, check out the video above. And check out his profile on BoardGameGeek to see what other classics from your childhood this master designer helped bring to shelves.

[h/t: Great Big Story]