Licensing Roundup

Cardinal Games (a Spin Master subsidiary) and Looney Labs are partnering in the production of licensed card games. The first two, summer 2019 releases, will be Marvel Fluxx and Jumanji Fluxx. Both companies will produce versions of the games. Cardinal’s will be priced at $15 MSRP for the mass-market outlets. Looney Labs’ will be priced at $20 for hobby and specialty retail, and will come with seven bonus cards.

 

Mattel has signed a 3 year licensing deal covering the Despicable Me franchise. The company will produce a range of toys and games in time for the theatrical premier of the Minions sequel in 2020.

Far Out Toys has signed on kid-reviewer Ryan ToysReview for two licensed action games Splash Out and Head Splat. Both are due at retail in March.

University Games has acquired a license for games based on the Mog Man series of youth books by Dav Pilkey.

USAopoly has signed an agreement with Games Workshop to produce licensed versions of the latter’s Talisman board game. The agreement grants USAopoly international distribution rights for co-branded games. Two are planned for this year, though the specific properties have not yet been revealed.

Weta Workshop announced plans for a District 9 board game via Kickstarter project launching in late March.

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TCGplayer has received a $10 million equity investment from Radian Capital. The company says the money will allow it grow staff while it expands its collectible market portal and retail support service from CCGs to board games, roleplaying games, comic books, sports cards, and video games.

Mayfair Games is closing up shop and has sold all its remaining game assets, as well as its majority stake in Lookout Games of Germany, to Asmodee North America. Lookout will continue to operate as a design studio of Asmodee.

Spin Master has signed a distribution deal with Toysmith for a variety of toy brands, including games and puzzles from Spin Master’s Cardinal subsidiary. The arrangement, which takes affect in June, will see Toysmith as exclusive distributor to the specialty market for the covered ranges.

North Star Games has instituted a minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policy, which is “non-negotiable for all North Star Games’ resellers and will be strictly enforced to ensure the continued value of its brand.” The company also issued a statement saying that, effective immediately, except for two unnamed parties, all sellers will be restricted from participating in Amazon’s Third-Party Marketplace. North Star promises to monitor product listings and suspend or terminate the accounts of those sellers that do not comply.

Hasbro has signed on as the master toy licensee for Power Rangers (Saban Brands), UglyDolls (STX Entertainment), Super Monsters (Netflix), and Top Wing (Nickelodeon), though only the announcement for Power Rangers specifically mentions games.

According to NPD, Mattel’s UNO card game was the top selling game in the United States in 2017.

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Star Wars Game Construction Kit

New from Mattel is Star Wars Bloxels, a video game construction kit. As with the original Bloxels, the kit enables anyone to build a video game by assembling physical blocks that represent terrain, power-ups, enemies, coins, hazards, and more. After that, all they have to do to capture the layout is take a picture with their mobile device.

With Star Wars Bloxels, games can be designed for any of four environments: Tatooine, Hoth, Endor, and Death Star.

 

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Challenge Games

Last year we got mouth guard and bottle flipping games. So what new games inspired by social media do we have for this year?

Based on the whisper or lip-reading challenge, Hasbro has for us Hearing Things ($15). In the box is a set of headphones that plays garbled sounds of people speaking, thus masking the sounds of actual people speaking when they read phrases off the included cards. Otherwise, game play is the same.

From Hasbro and Mattel both we have no-thumbs challenge games. Hasbro’s is called Get a Grip ($20) and comes with four cloth wraps to immobilize players’ thumbs, 60 challenge cards, two cans of sculpting clay, and two drawing pads. Mattel’s is called simply No Thumbs Challenge ($20) and comes with 56 cards (112 challenges) and eight plastic thumb straps, each with a silly plastic thumb unhelpfully sticking out to the side (but for safety, a player’s actual thumb is held securely to the palm). In either case, the goal is to complete the task as best one can without the benefit of an important evolutionary trait, opposable thumbs.

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BattleClaw

BattleClaw is Mattel’s latest entry in to the cartoon/collectible-toy-battle-game genre. The property originates in China, where it launched late last year, and is now arriving in North America with videos on YouTube and products at Toys “R” Us.

The BattleClaw story is one of a teenage boy (natch) who, following a prophesy, takes up a combat sport involving trapping elemental creatures and sending larger beasts in to battle, as a way to fight off a supernatural evil.

BattleClaw, the game, has players using claw-like grabbers to snag little plastic animal figures (the elemental-aligned Jinlin) needed to power beast cards. The beast cards, sometimes with the help of action cards, are then used to attack one’s opponent. A beast requires two Jinlin matching the elements on the card to power an attack and two more to revive from being tapped after it has attacked. Players can also use captured Jinlin to power-up an attack or draw extra cards. The first person to defeat four of an opponent’s beasts is the winner.

From the collectible perspective, there are several styles of grabbers, Jinlin that vary in shape and color, and already 115 different beast and action cards. Players build their own deck of cards for each game, and also contribute their own selection of Jinlin to the central play space.

BattleClaw is available in $10 Starter Packs, $15 Tournament Packs, and $20 2-Player Battle Packs.

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Coco Movie Games

Disney Pixar’s Coco movie opens in a couple of weeks. Two Coco card games are available now.

There’s Coco Remember Me from USAopoly, which is a traditional Lotería game illustrated with images from the movie. Lotería, common in Mexico, is pretty much the same as Bingo but with pictures instead of numbers, and cards instead of balls or other drawing lots.

From Mattel there’s Coco Uno. Gameplay is mostly unchanged. However, the deck does include a Remember Me card. Throwing that down forces the next person to draw three cards unless they can identify from memory the previous two cards played.

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Eh. After watching three episodes of The Toy Box, the toy-focused, Shark Tank like television show on ABC, I’m not impressed. Though, perhaps I’m jaded from 9 years attending Toy Fair… Actually, some of the toys in the first three episodes of The Toy Box weren’t bad. But not bad just doesn’t cut it. I mean, Mattel, who promises to produce the winning toy, doesn’t need a televised national competition to come up with dolls that have ballet costumes and a couple of extra degrees of articulation.

Not that a decently made new doll, or nested foam sports balls, couldn’t find some room in the marketplace. These ideas, though, do nothing for a large established toy company like Mattel, which has many designers on staff, as well as existing relationships with experienced outside inventors. Frankly, I don’t think the average viewer either is going to be much impressed.

The concept, I believe, has a lot of potential but the first three episodes so far haven’t realized it. The mentors representing the first on-screen evaluation stage are far too calm and gentle. Here’s a guy who sold his house and moved back in with his mother to finance production of a kind of plush he didn’t realize was already in the market from a different company. Another contestant’s brilliant idea is to make a stiff curved swing-set seat specifically for kids to stand on. Does that really require $130 specialized equipment? Definitely not. But throughout, the panel of expert mentors is calm and polite and barely challenges the inventors other than to express “concerns”. Liven it up guys!

By the way, let me say from personal experience, with an emergency room visit and stitches to the head, that standing on a swing-set seat is not a safe activity for children!

The second evaluation stage in each episode—before a panel of four children judges—you’d think would be a lot more fun to watch. Unfortunately, it just isn’t. Eleven year-old actors paid to look young and recite adult lines are lacking in chemistry and spontaneity.

Now maybe you think differently. Maybe you have more confidence in what will come out of this series. If so, you should know that the final chosen toy—whatever that will turn out to be—is already in production and will be sold exclusively at Toys “R” Us beginning May 20th. Toys “R” Us is also running a sweepstakes, where the grand prize includes travel for four to Los Angeles, a tour of Mattel headquarters, $1,500 in gift cards, and a meeting with the show’s winning inventor.

Also, if you think you have the perfect toy or game for Mattel, MysticArt Pictures is already casting inventors for a second season. And a U.K. version of the show has been licensed to Electus International. Maybe that one will be better. I hope so.

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Google Exec to be New Mattel CEO

Margaret “Margo” Georgiadis, most recently President, Americas at Google, will become the new CEO of Mattel effective February 8th. She will also join the Board of Directors.

Vacating the CEO position is Christopher Sinclair, who joined Mattel’s board in 1996 and took over the CEO position from Bryan Stockton in 2015. Sinclair is credited with helping turnaround the company, which in recent years lost its #1 position in the industry to Lego and the Disney princess license to Hasbro. He will stay on as Executive Chairman of the Board.

Stockton received good news recently when a Deleware court put an end to a Mattel shareholder suit that sought to force the company to seek the return of $10 million in severance that was paid when the former executive was let go.

In addition to Google, Georgiadis held past positions with Groupon, Discover Financial Services, and McKinsey & Company. Her hiring comes as Mattel puts more effort in to technology-based products, including a 3D printer and a personal assistant appliance.

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Toy Design Reality TV

MattelABC Television and Mattel are partnering on a new competition TV series, The Toy Box, scheduled to premier in the 2016-2017 season. The show will feature toy designers developing their inventions through a series of trials. Judges on the show will be children.

Mattel says it’ll have the winning toy design in stores for the airing of the final episode.

[via Broadway World]

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Would you like to be the primary person responsible for the Monopoly brand or help preserve games for museum archives or develop the digital version of a popular card game?

At Hasbro, the numerous open jobs include Senior Director of Global Marketing (“define and drive the global strategy for Family Gaming”), Design Manager (supervise technical design development efforts for a games category product line), and Product Designer (for “Phygital Games” combining physical and digital products). Subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast, is looking for, among others, a Director of Competitive Gaming and eSports for Magic: The Gathering, a Game Designer fluent in Japanese for Duel Masters, and a Principal Product Designer to oversee MtG R&D efforts and “develop strategic direction for block environments.”

Spin Master wants to hire a Public Relations Coordinator to manage outreach to press and a Senior Copywriter to author marketing materials.

Mattel has three Senior Designer positions open in the Boys Toy Box team for people with “a passion for action figures and/or game design.” Also positions for a Sr. Manager Digital Marketing and a Digital Producer.

ThinkFun is looking for a Product Manager and a Senior Product Manager to help organize the company’s projects, keep them moving forward, and manage quality.

Among the people that The Strong (National Museum of Play) is looking for are a Director of Conservation (to preserve games and toys in its collections), a Project Cataloger (to digitize and inventory games and puzzles), and a Teaching Host (to work with visiting school groups).

Ceaco (A.K.A. Gamewright) needs a Sales & Marketing Coordinator to assist with accounts, prepare marketing materials, and analyze sales data.

White Wizard Games (Star Realms) has an opening for a Digital Deckbuilder, that is, someone with experience in server-side apps and “a passion for card games.”

Thames & Kosmos needs a Purchasing & Planning Coordinator for analyzing sales data, managing inventories, and working with suppliers.

TOMY (Battroborg, Mr. Mouth) is recruiting for several positions: Brand Assistant, Digital Merchandising Manager, and Legal & Marketing Coordinator.

Toobeez (U.S. distributor of Funskool games from India) seeks a Junior Sales and Marketing Executive to help with social media, email marketing, and specialty retailer support.

The Toy Industry Association needs a Communications Specialist/Content Developer and a Director of Audience Relations. Both positions have a fair amount to do with New York Toy Fair.

Toyjobs is a specialty recruiter for the toy industry.

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