The Rise & Fall & Rise of Choose Your Own Adventure Books

there are libraries all over the world filled with the greatest works of literature but for everything those stories have taught us about ourselves and each other they all share a common fatal flaw that is choice or rather a

lack thereof forcing the reader down an inescapable predetermined path but there is one series of books that solve this problem so effectively that the entire genre of books now Bears its name hi I'm

Dan Larsson and this is the history of Choose Your Own Adventure

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kiwico.com / toygalaxy and thank you again to Kiwi Co for sponsoring this video Choose Your Own Adventure is the brand name of a series of 184 books originally published by Bantam Books

Between 1979 and 1998 that were designed with the potential for multiple story paths they elevated the reader from witness to accomplice from passive to aggressive Choose Your Own Adventure books were designed for younger readers

ages 7 to 14 they covered genres from science fiction to Fantasy to mystery and plenty of young adult horror adventures with time travel space aliens drag mystical Knights detectives and

regular Suburban kids searching for escape from the humdrum daily existence of life in the 1980s the dark times before the internet before Minecraft before Tik Tok sometimes called

interactive fiction Choose Your Own Adventure set themselves apart from regular books by giving you an active role in determining the outcome of the narrative after a bit of exposition you're presented with multiple story branches as challenging you to either

focus on the details as they develop to make an informed choice or more often than not just pick one or the other and hope for the best every book features the reader as a central character in the

story each story written from the second person perspective which means you are spoken to directly by the narrator as opposed to doing the speaking yourself about yourself there is no I and Choose

Your Own Adventure you sure about that stories were generally gender and race neutral however the illustrations frequently depicted a young boy which was the assumed Target demographic some

books had as many as 44 different possible story endings some good some bad others only had a handful there was no formula beyond what the writer decided to do with a particular story and their desire to write different

endings for that book whether you are prompted to turn the pages forward or backward the one constant was that each book would provide new choices and new adventures in 1969 Edward Packard was a

lawyer in New York City each night as he tucked his daughters into bed he would tell them a story Packard's stories were special because he had a recurring character named Pete Pete lived on an island where he experienced all kinds of

Adventures wherever Packard's imagination could take him one particular night Packard was at a loss for a new Pete story in a moment of either desperation or inspiration he

solicited ideas from the audience namely his two daughters they independently came up with different directions for the story to go after coming up with endings for each of their ideas it occurred to him that there was something

else happening here after listening to him tell the stories for so long his daughters having a chance to play a role in their creation brought an excitement and passion that Packard had not seen before perhaps they could be writers

someday but perhaps he could be a writer right now lawyering was fine but admittedly he was just going through the motions he decided to write a story inspired by the experience with his kids

the result was The Adventures of you on sugarcan island in 1970 he attempted to sell the book to Publishers but after nine rejections he went back to being a big City lawyer feeling like he was

stuck in a loop he had no choice but to start over at the beginning back to lawyering six years later Packard heard about a small publisher called Vermont Crossroads press who had a robust selection of children's books when

Packard brought the manuscript to co-owner Ray Montgomery he immediately recognized it as essentially a role playing game in book form so in 1976 sugarcane Island became the first book

in The Adventures of you series Montgomery had been working in interactive and roleplaying game design since the early 70s for both the government and private Enterprise he was willing to take a chance on Packard and

his book sugar island sold 8,000 copies an incredible number for Vermont Crossroads but still less than what both Packard and Montgomery believed it could be in 1977 Montgomery wrote the second

book in The Adventures of you series titled Journey Under the Sea using the pen name Robert Mountain Publishers Weekly gave the series The thumbs up saying it was an original idea well

carried out that said game books another term used to describe the genre have been around in some form or another since books have been boring probably since the day after the first book was assigned as a lesson in a school

somewhere printed materials featuring branching narratives can be found in works at least as early as the 1930s but none of the previous attempts managed to refine the concept into the proper reading format packaging and marketing

for widespread appeal in search of better distribution Packard left for JB lipincott a publisher with a larger Network in 1978 1979 Packard wrote two more books Deadwood City and third

planet from alter Dina Stevenson a junior editor at lipincott at the time was tasked with distilling the unique storytelling of the books into a simple concise easy to understand call out for

the jacket the cover of Deadwood City invited readers to Choose Your Own Adventure in the wild west while third planet from Al tempted readers to Choose Your Own Adventure in outer space

sometimes history happens when you're not expecting it and you don't even recognize it lipincott made no effort to trademark the phrase Choose Your Own Adventure because why would they it was

a one-sentence description on the cover of a few of their books how could they have known at the time they were sitting on the next Xerox or Kleenex or Band-Aid or rollerblade or taser or velcro a term

so associated with a product that it becomes the name for the entire field of products from synonymous to eponymous meanwhile in 1978 Montgomery sold his share of Vermont Crossroads but retained

the rights to the adventures of you series name he then negotiated a deal for six books with Bantam Books who were starting a new division targeting younger readers Bantam loved the idea of a new series of these books Montgomery

invited Packers and another writer Doug Turman to sign on as writers the series was officially renamed Choose Your Own Adventure and Bantam took the appropriate legal action to make sure

that it was now trademarked three books were released in 1979 book number one the cave of time was written by Edward Packard book number two Journey Under the Sea written by Ray Montgomery and

book number three by balloon to the Sahara written by Doug Turman as more books were released the writers pushed the limits of how they could construct more interesting and unexpected stories more challenges for the reader some

books included endless page Loops which while frustrating gave the reader no option but to start over others had endings that could not possibly be achieved even after exhausting all

potential paths within the book book number 12 inside UFO 5440 written by Packard has perfectly adequate good endings that deliver degrees of narrative closure but the only way to

get to the Miracle World Ultima is to either accidentally turn to a specific page or be rewarded with it by scanning every page the book to see if you missed something sales of choosey Own Adventure

books were just okay until Bantam attempted an unconventional marketing approach by seeding 100,000 copies in libraries across the country suddenly almost literally overnight the books became a national phenomenon Librarians

praised the enthusiasm with which kids read them even though they were not exactly quality literature have you even read PR now there's a DVD that lets you

become part part of the action and excitement of the bestselling books Choose Your Own Adventure your OTE lets you control the action only you can help discover the secrets of the Abominable

Snowman the voices of William H Maisy Frankie munes and Felicity Huffman bring the action to life use your remote to create over 10 different story paths don't just pick a movie Choose Your Own

Adventure 1998 plus 350 shipping and handling must be 18 or older to order available at a store near you when you have the kind of success Choose Your Own Adventure had you will

inspire imitators heck Bantam themselves saw the potential for more choosy titles as the appetite for Game books could not be sad dozens of copycats wannabes clones and variations popped up in the

market over the years TSR introduced Endless Quest books based on their popular role playing game Dungeons and Dragons that challenged the reader to pick a path to Adventure they also released heart Quest a series they

intended for girls to pick a path to romance and Adventure other comparable series included time machine interplanetary spy wizards warriors and

you find your fate with licensed characters from G.I Joe Transformers Thundercats Doctor Who and James Bond twist a plot Lone Wolf zorc a what do I do now book Nancy Drew and the hearty

boys be a detective mystery stories you say which way Case Closed there was official Choose Your Own Adventure Star Wars books one for each of the three films that existed prior to 1999 years

later you could choose your destiny decide Your Destiny or or try your eyes at Star Wars roleplaying Adventures books Bantam licensed Disney characters for a full series of books for most of

their popular films at the time Nintendo released you decide the adventure success also attracts controversy because Choose Your Own Adventure books were full of kids getting killed in

horrible and horribly creative ways and that kid was you cuz you were the one everything was happening to Avalanches explosions shipwrecks tarantula attacks firing squads maybe you get cut in half

by a spaceship door maybe you get turned into a squid and eaten by a shark eaten by a whale eaten by a lion maybe you're just a character in an old man's dream and you will die if he wakes up one reader reviewed a Choose Your Own

Adventure book saying quote I got a spear in my back and went in quicksand but other than that the book was great another reader stated that the best part of the series is you don't know if

you're going to die or not I died twice and I stayed alive twice Dr George berelli said there is a lot that affects us that we're not aware of I wouldn't allow my children to read this however

he notes that these extreme situations aren't repulsive or violent there is often a quasi comic sense in the disaster it's exaggerated and melodramatic and that keeps it from

seeming harsh or nasty there's also an underlying code in the books you as a reader never hurt anyone since 1980 Bantam Books was owned by a German

company called Burman in 1986 Burman purchased another publishing company called double day they merged Bantam and double day into a holding company called bantom double day Dell in 1998 berlman

purchased another publisher called random house and merged them with bantom double day Dell to create a new holding company called bantom Dell part of the Random House publishing group all this to say that over the years over the

reshuffling of offices Choose Your Own Adventure lost an internal Advocate with each year that went by there was no single person to Champion the books to steer the ship keeping them fresh and relevant responding to the tastes of the

audience in the late '90s after 20 years of Choose Your Own Adventure books Bantam was no longer keeping the entire Series in print the first 10 or so books were still selling as well as whatever new books were coming out but everything

in the middle had lapsed and sales began to drop off as the Millennium turned Bantam not only stopped publishing Choose Your Own Adventure books but let the trademark lapse on the name Ray Montgomery and his wife Shannon Gilligan

decided that they were going to license the stories from Bantam to shop to other Publishers but after getting a bunch of crap offers they decided to just re-register all the trademarks and do it themselves shann and Gilligan had worked

on Choose Your Own Adventure book since 198 won and had been writing them since 1985 in 2002 they had successfully acquired all the rights to the stories and the name Choose Your Own Adventure in3 they founded a company called

chooseco the new and current publisher of the series for everything except the books that were written by Ed Packard when the original contracts were made up for the rights to the stories there was a clause that allowed the ownership to revert back to the author if the book

was out of print for more than six months therefore Packard owned the rights to his own books and he started his own company called you Ventures a call back to his original concept cep

Adventures of you in 2006 chooseco moved Choose Your Own Adventure into the home theater exploring new platforms Choose Your Own Adventure the Abominable Snowman is an interactive animated DVD movie that allows viewers to make

choices with their DVD remote the same way they would turning pages in the book and they weren't just messing around with this the voice cast featured William H Macy Frankie munes Lacy shabar

Felicity Huffman Phil Lamar D Bradley Baker James Hong Daryl Sabara Kim my guest and the Luke Mark Skywalker Hamill the interactive DVD film won the 2006 I

parenting media award a kids first All-Star award and the film Advisory Board seal of approval however while it was intended to be the first in a series of films as of this video no other films

have been produced in 2010 on the other side of the choosey own adventure Legacy Ed Packard released an app for the iPhone returned to the cave of time as a sequel to his first official Choose Your

Own Adventure book number one from 1979 the cave of time the app brings sound and flashing lights into the digital reader for a bit more immersion than a printed page Packard released the app

through his company U ventures in cooperation with Simon and Schuster two more stories also based on his original books The Forbidden castle and through the black hole were released in 2012 they were also released as regular

printed books in 2018 zman games released a board game called Choose Your Own Adventure House of danger a Cooperative Adventure Game by Prospero Hall based on book number 15 written by

Ray Montgomery gather your friends make risky choices collect bizarre Clues and face mortal challenges you discover your own end to the game in 2019 audible partnered with chooseco to create Choose

Your Own Adventure an immersive audible experience that runs on Alexa powered devices to start just say Alexa open Choose Your Own Adventure from audible then prepare for a classic adventure

updated with professional audio and voice performances that same year speech Cloud Studios based in Amsterdam partnered with Edward Packard on Kickstarter to fund an Alexa based interactive Adventure adapting his 1987

book Journey to the year 3000 it officially launched in October of 2020 with voice performance by David cornat activate it by saying Alexa launch Journey 3000 kids that were born in the

70s the 80s and the 90s have grown up with Choose Your Own Adventure in their lives it's such a well-known part of the pop culture landscape that the phrase Choose Your Own Adventure not only became a Common Language phrase but a term to refer to just about anything

that offered the consumer a choice trying to decide between Pizza and Pasta Choose Your Own Adventure stay home and watch movies or go out with your friends Choose Your Own Adventure cats about to puke do you leave them on the rug or

pick them up to put them on the floor Choose Your Own Adventure when a name or phrase becomes so commonly understood by the general public and associated with the product or experience it's a phenomenon called genericide it means

that the trademark term has become so commonly used that it can no longer be trademarked it is now generic it's the difference between Xerox and dumpster

between Kleenex and teleprompter jacuzzi and flip phone in 2016 Netflix enter negotiations to license the trademark phrase Choose Your Own Adventure in 2018 Netflix released an episode of Black

Mirror called bander snatch the premise of the episode was a programmer who was adapting a Choose Your Own Adventure type book into a video game the episode was written and produced in 2017 and

aired in 2018 in that time however Netflix failed to come to an agreement with chco over the use of the phrase Choose Your Own Adventure but they used it anyway chco sued Netflix for willful infringements stating that the episode

was so dark that it would quote tarnish the book's reputation in the episode the program refers to the fictitious book as a Choose Your Own Adventure book which implies that it was an official part of the actual series of books chco had

previously defended their copyright against companies like Chrysler and several game producers all who thought the phrase was a generic term and that chco and Bantam before them were using it generically as well in response to

the lawsuit from chco Netflix counter suit claiming exactly that Choose Your Own Adventure has become a generic term and chooseco should lose their trademark there is plenty of precedent going back

to 1921 when Bayer company lost the trademark for aspirin since that case the standard has been if a brand name is understood by the public to refer broadly to a category of goods and

services rather than a brand specific good or service a company may be at risk of losing its trademark Netflix argued that even though they did attempt to acquire the license they shouldn't have

had to and besides they didn't use the distinctive design of the books nor even say it very much in the episode because says quote in contemporary parlament any situation that requires making a series

of unguided choices or that provides an opportunity to go back and remake a series of choices that turned out badly is referred to as a Choose Your Own Adventure the burden was on Netflix to prove that the term had become generic

however rather than get bogged down in a yearslong battle over an episode that aired years ago they chose to settle the case with chco on undisclosed terms for over four decades Choose Your Own Adventure has engaged kids who wouldn't

necessarily have been excited about reading or had trouble with maintaining interest with the structure of traditional books they empowered kids through Choice allowing them some control over their own path they allowed kids to live different lives go to

different places make decisions and learn from their mistakes they helped destigmatize roleplaying games at a time when it seemed like the associations with the occult were going to overwhelm them they predated a video game industry

dominated by immersive first-person experiences and the emergence of virtual reality technology from 1979 to 1998 Choose Your Own Adventure produced nearly 200 books and sold over 250

million copies another 16 million since it was relaunched in 2005 Choose Your Own Adventure books have been published in more than 40 languages and are the fourth bestselling children series of all time according to Wikipedia Creator

Edward Packard never could have imagined where his path would take him that night telling bedtime stories to his kids and how close we were to it never happening at all in his own words if I'd been a

better Storyteller I'd never have thought this up thanks for watching please hit like hit subscribe if you're not already a subscriber thank you very much to those of you who already are if you haven't heard we started streaming on Twitch

find us at twitch.tv/ toygalaxy if you're in the position to help the channel grow please visit our patreon or become a YouTube channel member and let us know in the comments down below if you were a Choose Your Own Adventure reader I sure was or rather I would say

that I definitely read some of them I don't have any really specific memories of the books other than that they were one of the more interesting things the library that wasn't just pictures of dinosaurs or fighter jets or a book about how to draw dinosaurs or fighter

jets I'm positive I read it at least a few of them maybe some of the copycat books like Lone Wolf and Endless Quest but my reading experience then was like it is now find the book with the coolest picture on the cover and check it off my

summer reading list cut