Often the "infected" person is someone who is perceived as different, due to disability, shyness, being of the opposite sex, or having peculiar mannerisms. In Serbia the game is known as šuga the word means scabies.Ī child is said to "catch" cooties through any form of bodily contact, proximity, or touching of an "infected" person or from a person of the opposite sex of the same age.
In Sweden they are known as tjejbaciller and killbaciller (literally "girl/boy bacilli") and in Finland they are known as the tyttöbakteeri and poikabakteeri ("girl/boy bacteria"). Cooties are known in Denmark as pigelus and drengelus and in Norway as jentelus and guttelus: each pair meaning literally "girl lice" and "boy lice". In Italy, children have the term la peste ("the plague"). The lice of the First World War trenches nicknamed "cooties" were also known as "arithmetic bugs" because "they added to our troubles, subtracted from our pleasures, divided our attention, and multiplied like hell." Like the British ' dreaded lurgi', the cooties games developed during the early 1950s polio epidemic, and became associated with dirt and contagion. In addition to the cooties games, the term cooties was popularised in America in the 1950s by military personnel coming back from service alongside the British in the South Pacific. This game was very successful, becoming an icon in 2003, the Toy Industry Association included it on its "Century of Toys List" of the 100 most memorable and most creative toys of the 20th century. Other cootie games followed, all involving some form of "bug" or "cootie", until The Game of Cootie was launched in 1948 by Schaper Toys. A hand-held game, the Cootie Game, was made by the Irvin-Smith Company of Chicago in 1915 it involved tilting capsules (the cooties) into a trap over a background illustration depicting a battlefield.