A new Disney Pixar movie means of course lots of opportunities to play along with licensed games at home.

Closest to its inspiration is the Finding Dory See Search Game from Spin Master ($25). The board in this one represents the ocean floor but in order to see what’s there players will have to look through diving goggles with special lenses. After drawing a card, players all at the same time search with their goggles to find the matching symbol.

Spin Master subsidiary Cardinal Industries has a Finding Dory Floor Memory Match Game ($16) and a Finding Dory Pop-Up Game ($15). Also the Finding Dory Shell Collecting Game ($17) in which players use Dory fishing poles to try and grab shells as they snap open and closed while spinning around the pool.

Hasbro has Finding Dory Guess Who ($15) and Finding Dory Operation ($20). On its way is a Finding Dory Monopoly Junior ($15).

Also shipping soon is Finding Dory Spot It ($13) from Asmodee.

From Mattel there’s Finding Dory Uno ($6).

Outside the U.S., Ravensburger’s put out Finding Dory Surprise Slides (£12), a spin-and-move game in which sections of the occasionally flip to vary the path. Ravensburger also has a Finding Dory Memory game (£4).

Finding Dory Don’t Wake Hank (£20) from Bandai is a kind-of balance game. The goal is to place pieces on Hank’s tentacles until they collapse.

More matching games, but appropriately waterproof, are available from Cartamundi, Finding Dory Pairs (£11), and Jumbo, Finding Dory Bath Memo Game.

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Cartamundi has two new entries in its Shuffle line of app-enhanced card games. Shuffle Subbuteo is an adaptation of the tabletop flicking football (A.K.A. soccer) game in which the trick is timing card-play to beat the opponents goalie. The optional app features a scoreboard timer and stadium sound-effects.

In Shuffle Twister, players choose a card with a colored dot and then must follow the card’s instruction. Even picking a card becomes more difficult, though, as the players are further tied up in knots. The optional Shuffle Twister app adds more silliness to the game by randomly assigning additional actions.

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Cartamundi has three new James Bond 007 products for the UK market. One is a James Bond movie poster deck of playing cards (retail price £3), another a Spectre deck (£4). The third is a James Bond Luxury Poker Set (£100).

River Horse has acquired a license produce a board game based on The Hunt for Red October, the movie version. Expect the company to make it a Kickstarter project.

Kung Fu Panda: The Board Game is coming from Modiphius Entertainment under license from DreamWorks Animation. Scheduled for release next fall, Kung Fu Panda will be a cooperative adventure game where the players take on the role of Po or one of the other Furious Five, complete quests, earn Kharma, upgrade their abilities, and work to defeat Tai Lung and other villains.

At the Fall Toy Preview show in Dallas, Wonder Forge premiered Matching and Surprise Slides games based on the children’s books of Eric Carle, including The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Hitting retail this week is Mystery Motive for Murder from Mayfair Games. Based on the Masterpiece Mystery series on PBS television, the game doesn’t hide the location and weapon used in a murder but rather asks the players to figure out the culprit and motive.

Releasing November 10th is a Fallout Collector’s Edition of Monopoly from USAopoly. It’s a Gamestop exclusive.

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For the upcoming Pixar movie, The Good Dinosaur, Cartamundi has planned a gift box with two card games and a puzzle. One of the games is based on Happy Families, which is kind of like multiplayer Go Fish. The Good Dinosaur gift boxes should be available in October at a retail price of £8.

[via Licensing.biz]

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Hasbro is selling its manufacturing facilities in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts and Waterford, Ireland to the Catamundi Group of Belgium. The two companies have signed a letter of intent and expect the deal to close by the end of September. Cartamundi plans to retain the approximately 500 manufacturing and distribution employees at both locations.

While the move represents a significant divestiture for Hasbro, today’s joint announcement emphasized the company’s continued commitment to the games category:

The divestiture is in line with Hasbro’s mission of Creating the World’s Best Play Experiences and building larger more global brands. Hasbro will continue to invest resources in areas that will maximize the value of the company’s brands globally, including in design, development, storytelling, sales and marketing. The sale of these facilities will have no impact to Hasbro’s commitment to the Games category and the company will continue to invest in gaming.

Chris Van Doorslaer, CEO of Cartamundi, was quoted as saying:

Through this acquisition we will become the world market leader in the manufacturing of board games. Our expanded capabilities in board game manufacturing further our mission to create game products and experiences that connect families and friends of every generation. We welcome Hasbro’s highly dedicated and experienced work force to our team and we look forward to continuing to manufacture Hasbro games at East Longmeadow and Waterford while also adding volume from both our current and new global customers.

Cartamundi, which was established in 1970, currently employs 1,450 and had sales in 2014 of €199 million.

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PING (Printed Intelligent NFC Game cards and Packaging), a consortium of six European companies is working on the integration of near field communications (NFC) in to printed products, including board and card games. One of the consortium is the game company, Cartamundi. Other participants include Van Genechten Packaging, PragmatIC, SMARTRAC, TNO, and imec. No specific game products have been announced yet. However, SMARTRAC, a producer of RFID technology, has opened a research and testing center in Finland.

Cartamundi believes that incorporating NFC in to cards, for example, could allow people to play games remotely but with physical components or enable tracing histories of individual cards.

[via Printed Electronics Now]

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