Milton Bradley game designers turned the concept into Operation. How Dry I Am: In John Spinello’s electrified game, called Death Valley, a character wanders the desert in search of water. The global franchise for all this electrified silliness has generated an estimated $40 million in sales over the years. (A 2013 attempt to make Cavity Sam thinner and younger and the game pieces larger and easier to extract did not go over well with fans.) Variations of Operation have featured cartoon characters other than Cavity Sam, such as Homer Simpson, from whose body the player extracted donuts and pretzels, and Star Wars’ Chewbacca, who’s been infested with Porgs and other “hair hazards.” International editions are available in French, German, Italian, and Portuguese/Spanish. The game debuted in 1965, and the English-language version has remained virtually the same for decades. They created a surgery-themed game, and Operation was born. His team tinkered with the idea but decided it would be more interesting if the players had to remove an object rather than insert a probe. Mel Taft, a game designer at Milton Bradley, saw a prototype of Death Valley and thought it had potential. patent ( 3,333,846), and the promise of a job, which never materialized. Spinello sold the idea to Marvin Glass and Associates, a Chicago-based toy design company, for US $500, his name on the U.S.