Toys-R-Us just bought The Parent Company for an undisclosed amount. Among other holdings, The Parent Company owns eToys, one of Toys-R-Us’ former major competitors (until it went bankrupt).

Remember that KB Toys bellied up last year. We’re running out of major national toy and game retailers. Time to stock up on Walmart?

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Now that Spin Master’s Bakugan was the surprise hit of last year, look forward to cascades of Bakugan-themed accessories.

Youth electronics shop Digital Blue will release Bakugan licensed digital cameras, clock radios, walkie talkies, and more. In a step up from the old slap-a-picture-on type of licensing, they claim that “each item includes a point of interactivity with the popular Bakuganballs from Spin Master.”

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There’s already an electronic Monopoly 3D, so it only makes sense to create a board game version too, right?

Hasbro unveiled a new version simply called Monopoly City in which you get a whole lot more building types and you get to place them physically onto the board. Can’t tell for sure, but it looks like the standard Atlantic City properties.

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The Buffalo Bulletin pimps Mus, allegedly the most popular card game in Spain. (source) Mus originates from the Basque region, and is a partnership bidding/bluffing game played with a special deck of 40 cards.

Boing Boing guest blogger Gareth Branwyn pimps the card game Gloom as a gateway game. (source)

Joystiq columnist Dustin Burg pimps the game Dungeon Twister as it’s now heading for XBox Live. (source)

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Nerds @ Heart is a dating scene for self-selected nerds: gamers, science types, readers, and so on. Activities include board games, trivia, and the like. They have both straight and gay meetups.

Right now it’s only in the Chicago area, but hopefully it will grow.

I spied the games Blokus, Stratego, Risk, Pictionary, Balderdash, Taboo, Upwords, Apples to Apples, and Ticket to Ride. The other games are too blurry to make out.

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I followed Dragon Magazine from issues #59 to around #145. I missed out on Phineas Fingers (but read the compilation), but I caught all of Snarfquest, and nearly all of Wormy and What’s New With Phil and Dixie. Or so I had thought.

Turns out that WNwPaD was reincarnated during the Magic: the Gathering years in Duelist and returned to Dragon in later issues; Phil did artwork for some of the earlier Magic cards.

If you missed them, Phil has been posting all of the strips online, starting with the very first issue. He’s currently up to the middle of the Duelist strips. Or you can buy them at Amazon; 1, 2, and 3.

Of course, Phil is also known nowadays for his incredible Girl Genius web comic series (also available at Amazon).

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Coming this fall, Hasbro will release Clue: Secret and Spies edition, a game that sends you text messages with secret clues while you’re playing.

In addition, an ultravolet secret decoded reveals secret missions for each player.

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Over on BGN, Mary Prasad provides a fascinating look inside Ludo Fact, a German board game production plant.

They take in the raw materials and create the finished, boxed, and wrapped product, and then ship it out to the distributors. Many more great pictures, too.

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Despite featuring advertisements with the likes of Patrick Stewart and Julie Walters, electronic “brain training” games such as Brain Age aren’t going to help you, so says Lifespan in an article published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

In fact, if you rely on them instead of performing the traditionally proposed health advice such as eating right and exercise, you’ll probably end up worse off than before.

The study of 67 schoolchildren aged 10 found homework, reading, playing puzzles such as Sudoku and board games such as Scrabble were just as good, if not better than, brain training games.

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Briarpatch will be producing board and card games for Scholastic Media’s WordGirl, an animated series about a girl who uses her vocabulary power to fight outlaws bent on word domination.

Games are set for release in 2010.

(source)

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