Quebecor World Direct--Building Business, One Client at a Time

At the time, the material used to conceal the image on a game piece was removed via a moist tissue, which was messy. Davis says customers wanted something better. So, in the mid '60s, the company invented a removable latex coating, which is commonly referred to as "scratch-off."

The number of customers and variety of game-play formats grew in the 1970s and, in 1973, Dittler Brothers produced the first state lottery ticket using scratch-off. Business continued to grow in the '80s, with the bulk of the customer base becoming quick-service restaurants. It was the unique needs of the fast food industry—to have game pieces attached to food packaging items, i.e., cups, bags and sandwich boxes—that led the company to another innovation: the promotional game label (which, for the first time, says Davis, incorporated fully variable, computer-generated imaging).