The highlight of Winning Moves 2014 Toy Fair booth was for me Connect 4 & More ($6, available now). Instead of using an upright contraption, the game is played by laying tiles on a table. A player’s goal is still to get four in a row, however when placing a tile, all adjacent sides must have matching colors. By allowing play in all four directions, yet restricting moves on individual turns to matching spaces, I found this new version to be surprisingly engaging for a Connect 4 title.
Another variant that the company had on display was Jenga Throw’n Go ($25, available now). This one adds a die, which tells players which of the two colors they’re supposed to pull on their turn.
Two classic titles being resurrected by Winning moves are Aggravation ($20, available now) and Touring ($6, available now). Both were previously published by Parker Brothers. The former is a version of Pachisi. The latter, a card game about auto racing across the United States, was published for nearly 60 years but replaced in the 1960s by Mille Bornes, a card game about auto racing across France.
Finally, Winning Moves is launching a series of waterproof, washable, and floating card games, so kids can have something to play in the bath ($16 each, available now). Splashimals is a matching game about animals, Splash Pals a matching game about people. Splash Jack is a regular deck of playing cards. So is Splash Jack Royal, but with a design aimed at adults (also for bath time?).