The party game Snake Oil was the brainchild of Jeff Ochs, Social Entrepreneur as Founding Director of Breakthrough Saint Paul and Venn Foundation. While on an airplane in the fall of 2008, he was chuckling at the absurd inventions available in the famous (and now defunct) Sky Mall catalogue and noticed a pattern: many product names were simple combinations of two random nouns. Letting the idea percolate, Jeff eventually made a prototype, tested the game, and refined the rules. He also started gathering information about the game industry and, in 2009 while living in China, learning about game manufacturing. At this point, Jeff reached out to Pat Hayes Kaufman, graphic designer and founding partner of The Design Company, and Breakthrough Saint Paul board member. She helped name the game, developed the original graphics, and Snake Oil LLC was officially born.
Since hitting the market in November 2011, Snake Oil has had one success after another. It was the #5 best-selling game of the holiday season at Games By James in the Mall of America. In January 2012, the game won the first of a long list of major awards, culminating in the prestigious Mensa Select Award for 2012. In 2013, Jeff and Pat licensed Snake Oil to Out of the Box Publishing, the company responsible for launching the hit game Apples‐to-Apples when it underwent a redesign. In 2016 it was relicensed to Hasbro, and in 2019 was reclaimed by its original owners … Snake Oil LLC … and Pat and Jeff.
