Indie Boards & Cards is merging with Action Phase Games to create “a single games publishing behemoth.” Most of the company’s products will carry the Indie Boards & Cards name, though the Heroes Wanted line and certain other products will continue under the Action Phase brand. Distribution will remain managed by PSI.

Funnybone Toys has signed on with Lion Rampant for distribution in Canada. Previously, the company was handling Canadian sales directly. Funnybone says the move is the first step of a global expansion.

Ninja Division Publishing (Super Dungeon Explore) and Seven Seas Entertainment have formed a joint venture, Shinobi 7, that “will focus on producing tabletop games that are based on hit anime, manga, and pop culture brands.” The new company’s first title will be Space Dandy Galactic Deck-Building Game.

Superstore chain, Hastings, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while owing PSI, Ultra PRO, and ACD Distribution each hundred of thousands of dollars.

Spin Master is opening an office in Australia and will take over the distribution of its own products currently distributed by Funtastic. The company is also expanding its operations in Mexico and Central and Eastern Europe and recently purchased children’s app makers Toca Boca and Sago Mini.

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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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Mattel’s fourth quarter gross sales were 3 percent higher in 2015, absent the impact of currency exchange rates, compared to the same period in the previous year. Full-year gross sales were up 1 percent in constant-currency terms, buoyed by 7 percent growth in Fisher-Price and a 22 percent rise from Hot Wheels. Mattel’s entertainment business, which includes both the digital and tabletop games categories, grew 16 percent.

A recently announced “strategic partnership” will see Stronghold Games handling all English-language games of eggerspiele in North America.

The two Toys “R” Us stores in Ireland are shutting down just 6 months after opening.

Queen Games has begun providing its games direct to distributors in North America, ending its distribution arrangement with Asmodee NA. Queen Games will use Ship Naked for fulfillment, with Hit Point Sales also providing an alternate sales vehicle.

For its part, Asmodee has acquired Nordic and Dutch distributor Bersgala Enigma and is renaming the company to just “Enigma”.

Patch Products of Beloit, Wisconsin has acquired STEM and construction toy company, Roominate. Patch also changed its name to Playmonster.

Spin Master has acquired the Etch A Sketch and Doodle Sketch brands, including all related patents, trademarks, tooling, and inventory, from The Ohio Art Company.

Bay Tek Games has purchased Skee Ball.

Playmore Games of Finland announced the closing of an Angel round of funding with €250,000 from Nolwenture Ltd. and Davigia Ltd. The investment will be used to expand the company’s distribution network for tabletop games, as well as to develop its Dized application for enhancing tabletop games with digital content.

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For the 50th anniversary of the original series Star Trek, CBS has licensed Gale Force 9 to produce hobby games, USAopoly for board games, and Spin Master for RC vehicles.

Pressman has the game license for Powerpuff Girls. Spin Master has the master toy license.

According to a press release from Rovio, the game license for the upcoming Angry Birds movie went to Hasbro, yet at Toy Fair, I saw a game at Spin Master and none at Hasbo.

Jumbo has a license to produce Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice games in Europe.

Netflix has ordered a Stretch Armstrong series from Hasbro Studios.

River Horse is working on a board game based on The Hunger Games. WizKids used to have that license.

There will be a Master of Orion board game from Hobby World.

Winning Moves UK has a new Midsomer Murders Cluedo.

Mattel has taken over the Halo toy and figure license.

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Escape rooms, one of the hottest new trends in entertainment, are a kind-of live adventure game. Participants are locked in a room or similar location and given usually about an hour to solve puzzles and follow a series of clues that finds the key and lets them out. Most are built around a theme or story and designed for groups of 4-6 friends.

But though escape rooms are popping up in many urban locations, they’re not accessible to many people, can sometimes be difficult to schedule, and can cost a hundred dollars or more for a 1 hour session. Enter several companies offering escape rooms to go.

Developed by Identity Games and licensed for North American distribution by Spin Master, Escape Room The Game is a $40 package due in the summer that can run 2-5 participants through four different rooms. The clues, puzzles, and mysteries for each room are contained in three envelopes. When participants believe they have solved an envelope, they choose one of the included keys and plug it in to the game’s electronic timer, called a “chrono decoder”. If they’re correct, they can move on to the next envelope. If not, the chrono decoder imposes a time penalty. Though the base game is not yet at retail, Identity is already at work on expansion packs, which should make use of the same chrono decoder.

Another at-home option, ThinkFun’s Escape the Room: Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor, addresses the problem of hiding answers with a “solution wheel” rather than something electronic. The game begins with the reading of a scene card and proceeds along a story line. Every puzzle solved on the way leads to a symbol and those symbols have to line up in a certain way on the wheel in order to trigger the next stage of the mystery. Due in March, Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor is just a single room activity but is timed at 90 minutes and priced at only $22.

There’s also the Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment Kickstarter project. At $45, this one is also only a single room game. However, it is a more handcrafted experience with jars, locks, and other more substantial elements. Also, certain replacement parts will be available, so that the kit can be used to host other teams.

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Spin Master Corp. of Canada is acquiring the entire game portfolio of Italian company Editrice Giochi. The latter’s most popular titles are Risiko, a variant of Risk, and Scarabeo, which is strikingly similar to but not officially a version of Scrabble. The purchase also includes the Editrice Giochi brand.

Spin Master did not reveal a price for the transaction but did state that it continues to be in the market additional acquisitions.

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For its third-quarter financial results just reported, Spin Master Corp. earned revenue of US$386.8 million, an increase of 31.7 percent over the same quarter of 2014. Product lines that were major contributors include Paw Patrol (which the company expects will represent 20 percent of total sales by the end of the year) and Star Wars. Product launches for Meccanoid, Bunchems, Chubby Puppies, and Little Charmers also helped fuel growth, while the company experienced declines in the Zoomer, Digi Bird, Flutterbye Fairy, and How to Train Your Dragon lines.

Spin Master’s “activities, games & puzzles, and fun furniture” segment grew 25.4 percent, with year-to-date sales totaling $131.2 million. Bunchems, Text Cool, Knit Cool, and Marshmallow furniture were the top performers in this category.

Also factoring in to the company’s strong third quarter was a schedule of earlier deliveries. Due to specific efforts to move product earlier this year, as well as the impact of the port strike last year, Spin Master is shipping about 3 weeks ahead. As a result, the company expects fourth-quarter revenue to be slightly lower, though the overall second-half should still be up.

Reflecting expenses from its recent IPO, the company’s net income in Q3 was down 7.3 percent to $51.1 million (52¢ per share).

Spin Master continues to pursue acquisitions and recently closed on the purchase of Cardinal Industries. That pushed the company in to the number 2 position for U.S. market share in games.

One of the company’s hottest products this season, the Air Hogs Millenium Falcon, is tracking to sell out in early December.

Regarding future products, Spin Master has started work toward a relaunch of Bakugan.

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I already wrote about Star Wars The Force Awakens games from Hasbro, Spin Master, and Topps but, as you’ll see below, there are still more.

Some of these may be exclusive to certain retailers. Also, some saw publication under a Star Wars theme previously but all have now at least been updated with the latest characters, graphic design, and images.

The Star Wars Death Star Perplexus 3-D maze has lights and sounds and… well, let’s be fair, was already shaped like a Death Star. Spin Master is distributing it to major retail outlets, Patch Products to specialty stores.

Spin Master is also doing a Star Wars Death Star Boom Boom Balloon. It seems like such an obvious fit, yet don’t the good guys want the Death Star to explode?

Uncle Milton’s selling a Star Wars Jedi Holocron. It’s an electronic thingamabob that can guess what you’re thinking (providing it’s related to Star Wars) within 20 questions.

From Wonder Forge, there’s a Star Wars The Force Awakens Battle Matching Game, which supposedly adds a twist to basic matching games but what that is I don’t know.

Also from Wonder Forge is Star Wars The Force Awakens 6-in-1, which includes the Battle Matching Game, as well as Star Wars versions of Dominoes, Bingo, and other standards.

Exclusive for Target, Wonder Forge has made the Star Wars Star Destroyer Strike Game. This one has the Finalizer at the center shooting actual lasers.

Toys “R” Us has two more Star Wars games from Hasbro: Star Wars Guess Who? and Star Wars Sorry. The latter imagines droids darting around the Millennium Falcon attempting to effect repairs without getting in each other’s way.

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Spin Master is also in on the Star Wars The Force Awakens game with a product that makes me think “Star Wars Bakugan”. What you actually get with Star Wars Box Busters, though, is a simple battle game played with miniature scenes built in to small pop-open plastic cubes.

Players place their Box Buster cubes, closed, on a battle mat and roll a die. The die results include blast, double-blast, shield, and special. Each shield rolled by an opponent cancels a single blast but for each remaining blast, a player scores a hit. The first hit forces an opponent to pop open their cube. And enough hits will eventually destroy an opponent’s command center and win the game.

Also, players can save up to two die rolls. Not only can they be more useful in a later turn, but also certain combinations produce more powerful results, unique to the particular cube (for example, special+double-blast gives a player with Battle of Yavin five blasts in that one turn and special+special allows the player with Tusken Raider Attack to remove all damage from two cube areas).

In the Star Wars Box Busters series there are two two-cube sets for $16, Battle of Naboo & Battle of Hoth and Tusken Raider Attack & The Battle of Yavin, as well as five single-cube packs for $8-14, Battle of Yavin, Battle of Hoth, Endor Attack, Death Star, and Rebels TIE Fighter Attack.

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Spin Master is planning to go pubic. The company has filed with Canadian authorities for a proposed initial public offering of subordinate voting shares. No pricing was yet revealed.

The company is currently held by Ronnen Harary, Anton Rabie, and Ben Varadi. Harary and Rabie founded Spin Master in 1994. Varadi, a business school classmate, joined later that year.

Spin Master’s first product was Earth Buddy, a head formed with a nylon stocking and sawdust and covered with grass seed that grew to look like hair. Since then, Spin Master has released a wide range of toy and game products, most notable among them Air Hogs and Bakugan. It’s latest hot properties include Paw Patrol and Zoomer, and the company is in the process of acquiring Cardinal Industries for US$50 million.

According to the preliminary prospectus, Spin Master’s gross sales in 2014 were US$812 million, which puts it roughly in fifth place among toy companies worldwide, behind Lego, Mattel, Hasbro, and MGA Entertainment. The prospectus quotes Euromonitor as placing Spin Master also in fifth place for market share in the U.S., after Mattel, Hasbro, Lego, and Hallmark.

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