November is a couple months away, but it’s the right time to start planning your trip to TAGIE and ChiTAG! And guess what?  I’ve worked out a discount for all readers of The Game Aisle! Write “The Game Aisle” on your registration form (or download the one below) and get $75 off the full registration cost!*

What are TAGIE and ChiTAG?

TAGIE is the Toy and Game Inventor’s Expo and it is the best place for new and experienced toy and game inventors to meet industry experts and expand their knowledge of the business.  It’s a two day conference that covers a variety of topics including:

• How to get your concept licensed
• Self-manufacturing
• Protecting your ideas
• Using sales reps and distributors
• Using an agent
• Prototypes and play testing
• Toy safety legislation
• and much, much more!

Without repeating everything you can find on the TAGIE website (see here) I’ll just give you some of the highlights.  Besides getting all of your questions answered during the discussion panels, conference attendees mingle with the speakers (including me) during “inventor table walkabouts.”  During these “walkabouts” you may show experts your toy and game concepts and gather candid feedback.  Past attendees have shown everything from scrap-paper prototypes, to drawings, all the way to fully manufactured products!  If you want more time with an expert, you can choose to sign up for the one-on-one consultations which give you private meeting times with some of the experts.  This is a great way to talk one-on-one with buyers, reps, manufacturers, etc. that you may not have access to at any other time!

Personally, I recommend this event because it’s a really open and transparent experience.  Experts mingle and chat with attendees at all of the meals.  On Thursday night there is an “Evening with the Experts” dinner that is a great way for the attendees and experts to network over drinks and food.  And then on Friday night, it’s the Toy and Game Inventor Awards and a ticket is included in the registration!  It’s an AMAZING evening with the top industry inventors, designers and manufacturers and last year the inventor of the Game of Life, Reuben Klamer, was honored.  The TAGIE conference is, in my opinion, the top networking event of the year.

And then to boot, it is right before ChiTAG (Chicago Toy and Game Fair)! ChiTAG is the largest, family-friendly game expo that is open to the public! So whether you get a booth to sell or demo your products or if you just want walk the show with your family, it’s not something you want to miss.  And how smart is this?   It’s right at the start of the holiday season so you can push your products and help them make it onto Christmas Wish lists — or better yet, into the shopping bags of show attendees.

When & Where do TAGIE and ChiTAG take place?

TAGIE is Thurs. November 18 & Fri. November 19, 2010 (*One-On-Ones take place on Sat.)

ChiTAG is Sat. November 20 & Sun. November 21, 2010

Both take place at Chicago’s Scenic Navy Pier

How do I sign up?

So glad that you asked!  You can download the registration PDF by clicking here: 2010_TAGIE_Registration.  Or if you want more information please go to the TAGIE site: www.TAGIE.net Just remember to write “The Game Aisle” on your registration form and subtract $75 from the “Full Registration” cost only*.  If you click on the PDF above, I’ve done it for you.  And for you out-of-towners, the hotel info is here.

Hope to see you there!

*$75 off is for the “Full Registration” only and cannot be combined with any other offers and void where prohibited.

**FYI, I do not receive commission, kickbacks or money of any kind for promoting this event.  I just think it’s the best conference for game inventors of all experience levels.

A month or so ago it was announced that Eddy Goldfarb (left) will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement award at the Toy and Game Inventor Awards in Chicago next November.  Most of you know that I’m from Chicago and I got my start at the now defunct invention firm Meyer/Glass Design.  While I was there I worked alongside Randy Klimpert who is now at Hasbro doing product design for Cranium and Trivial Pursuit.  Through blur of good and bad idea meetings, Simpson jokes and office pranks, I recalled Randy once mentioned that he worked with Eddy early in his career.  I wondered what that would be like, so I asked Randy for an interview and this is what I found out…

Q.   When did you work with Eddy?

“Early in my career.  I started at Marvin Glass and worked there for about two and a half years before I moved to California to work with Eddy from 1984-1989.  After six years with Eddy I moved back to Chicago to help start up the then newly formed Meyer/Glass Design.”

Q. What was it like working with Eddy?

“Eddy is an amazing guy.  Some succeed in the invention biz just by being savvy businessmen, but Eddy is a great inventor AND a great businessman.  He also loved every aspect of the [inventing] industry.  He loved the process, the problem solving, the model making, the presentation…all of it.  Some people only like one aspect, but not Eddy, he was part of it all.”

Q. What did you learn from working with Eddy?

“The invention side of the business can be so disappointing; Eddy always immediately bounced back from disappointment.  He really was a model for not letting it get you down.”

Q. What did you work on while you were there?

“One of my favorites was a game called Quicksand in which the movers get smaller as you play, but it wasn’t a big hit.  I also worked on Shark Attack, and I was responsible for the original Lego Creator game.   But Eddy’s earlier items are really the classics.  My favorites are the Vac·U·Form –I really wanted one of those as a kid — and Battling Tops.  Kerplunk is a amazing too, but as a child I liked Battling Tops better.  Eddy really was a true innovator.  Between the Marvin Glass designers and Eddy, together they invented most of the most classic games of the 1960s..”

Q. Any great stories about working with Eddy?

“Eddy and I had a great working relationship, and in my years there I think I only made him mad once.  I was working in the shop over a weekend on a side project and Eddy came in.  He wanted to know what I was working on and I apologized and admitted that it was a side job.  If I had just asked him first he would have said it was okay, but I was young and I hadn’t and it upset him.  I told him that I didn’t know how else I was going to get it done and that I really wanted to do it and he started to get interested in what it was.  I showed him what it was going to be — that it was a motorized bubble machine, part of a set of stage props for Steve Martin, and after that he was okay with it.  Later he saw the piece in which it was used and he got really excited about it.  It was his ‘Great Flydini’ act…you should look it up, it’s really funny.”

And I did…enjoy this (the bubbles are the encore):

Q. Any last words you liked to share about Eddy?

“We live in a world where the word ‘genius’ is thrown around a lot, but Eddy really is a genius, without question.”

I guess we can all see why Eddy is getting the Lifetime Achievement award!

Thanks to Randy Klimpert for cutting a little bit of time out of his busy schedule to talk to me.  He’s a great inventor and I learned a lot from him early in my career and it sounds like he learned some of it from the best in the biz!

• More info on the awards: http://www.tagieawards.com
• Article on Eddy by inventor Tim Walsh: http://www.globaltoynews.com/2010/05/ingenious-eddy.html

Photo of Eddy on main page taken from Golf Connoisseur Magazine, 2005.

After a long flight with a little hangover and a medical emergency on board that caused the paramedics to meet my plane at the gate, I’m back from 107th American International Toy Fair and it was a great time!  Toy Fair has really changed over the past 10 years with the Toy Building closing and the development of Dallas Fall Toy Preview but it’s still an important event on any game inventor’s calendar!

*Peggy Brown demo-ing Q-bitz

In its current state Toy Fair is a mix of large companies with small (if any) booths, medium companies with large booths all the way down to the basement area with self-publishers pitching their one great idea.  It’s a great place to meet new clients, catch up with old ones, demo and sign products and of course hang out with the inventor competition!  Yes, that’s right folks – we hope our product concepts squash each other’s in line reviews but when it comes to Toy Fair we congratulate everyone on their successes and enjoy spending some time together.  This Toy Fair I had dinner with Colleen McCarthy-Evans (inventor of In A Pickle and Gamewright’s new game It’s A Plan), Keith Meyers (inventor of Out of the Box’s new game Shake ‘N Take), Peggy Brown (inventor of Backseat Drawing and Gamewright’s new game Hide and Eek), Jack Degnan (inventor of Word on the Street) and Roger Gehrke (inventor of the international hit Sybarit).  And while we gushed over the idea of a group of us being picked up by the Cash Cab after dinner we munched on cricket tostadas – thanks to the adventurous tastes of Colleen McCarthy Evans.  As a side note: the texture is crunchy but was really the little legs sticking out that bothered me most.  I also had a blast at the Game Industry Get Together hosted by the wonderful Mary Couzin – it’s my favorite Toy Fair event and this year was probably the best one yet!  Got to love an industry that knows how to put business aside and party together!

Besides enjoying the company of other inventors and game geeks, here are some of the highlights of my trip:

The Hasbro Inventor Event was Sunday evening in the New York Times building where they had a showroom of some of their new products including the new round Monopoly dubbed Monopoly:Revolution, which was not getting much attention.   There was a great technology based word game that I’m going to get my hands on ASAP that was catching everybody’s eye.  It’s called Scrabble Flash and the technology is really cool.  There are five blocks with little screens that flash letters on them.  Using “SmartLink” technology to communicate with each other, the blocks count how many words you can make by placing the blocks next to each other.  Each time you create a word the letters flash to show that it’s been counted.  I got to play for a little bit and really enjoyed the magic of the technology.  I also hear that it has multiple modes, so seeing how it plays in a group setting is already on my to do list.

I saw Donnie Osmond walking through Javits (and he was much shorter than I expected).  I assume he was visiting his sister Marie’s doll booth.  Not super exciting, but I’ll admit it surprised me a bit so I’m calling it a “highlight.”

I got to see my new game that is still under raps at Winning Moves.  I can’t wait to tell you all about it – it’s really some of my best work.  I could play for HOURS!  I also got to see a game I have coming out with Daddy-O Productions called Don’t Lose Your Shirt.  They did the BEST job with the packaging; it’s a super cute little bowling bag.  I can’t believe I don’t have a picture!

On Monday as I ran from meeting to meeting I wandered past the Discovery Bay Games booth and got to meet Kenan Thompson! He’s my favorite SNL cast member!  (don’t judge the bad photo – after a day of running around a giant showroom you’d look like hell too.)  He was there with Fred Armisen promoting the new SNL board game.  On Tuesday when I had a meeting at the DSB booth Daryl Hannah was there promoting the game she developed with Hilary Shepard called Liebrary.  The two of them were presenters at the TAGIE awards in Chicago during the Chicago Toy and Game Show this past November.

I also ran into the inventor of Jenga – again – and I’ll be picking her brain soon on how she came up with such a timeless product.  I’m sure it will make for a good article!

And then most importantly for you readers – I found a bunch of great games to review during the next couple months.  And yes, some of them will be shameless plugs as I have all intentions of reviewing my own games.  Bonus for us all – a lot of them are going to nicely squeeze into the under $20 category!  Yay!  Check back soon for new articles.  My box of game samples arrives on Friday and I hope to get them played really soon!

Well it’s over!  The Toy & Game Inventor’s Expo (TAGIE), the TAGIE Awards and ChiTag have come and gone.  It’s been a long couple of days, but it’s really one of my favorite times of the year.    Lots of old inventors, new inventors, industry experts and inventor relations folks discussing their experiences within the industry and catching up on life since Toy Fair.

Some of the highlights:

Thursday:

• Inventor Bruce Lund’s TAGIE conference keynote speech highlighting his life from a jobless industrial design student to getting a position at Marvin Glass and starting in the industry, all the way to being the success he is today.  He talked about some of his favorite past inventions like Fireball Island and TMX Elmo.  Bruce also received the Humanitarian of the Year Award at the TAGIE Awards for his work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Chicago amongst other charitable organiztions.
• Razor President, Carlton Calvin’s TAGIE conference keynote speech was also very interested.  He talked about how he got started by figuring out a way of putting scorpions into POGS (remember those?) in his garage lab/shop and then bringing ten to a trade show in an attempt to sell them.  His first order was for 300 thousand and he then had to find away to get enough scorpions to fill the order!  Once the POGS craze died down he made scorpion yo-yos with the leftovers.  After dabbling in a couple other things he finally ended up working out a deal to sell the Razor scooter in the US.  At the beginning of the craze he was selling ~1 million a month.  Now his company works with inventors to come up with great scooter line extension and new products for the Razor company including this year’s hot RipRider 360 which is like a big wheel that you can do crazy spins with.  (Interesting tidbit – his son invented this!)
• During the conference panels Sybarit AB President, Roger Gehrke announcing that he wants to be “seduced” by new product concepts.  Ha!  What a funny Swede.
  That night it was the conference dinner and I sat with Mike Gray of Hasbro, Matt Forbeck and Roger Gehrke and then played trivia with John Bell and Jonathan Leahy from Buffalo Games.  Love these networking events!

Friday:

• At the TAGIE Awards, winner Peggy Brown’s acceptance speech was hilarious.  Strong work for someone who told me she didn’t prepare anything ahead of time because it was “a long shot.”  I’ve seen her body of work – it wasn’t a long shot – but she had some stiff competition being up against the EXTREMELY prolific Reiner Knizia (Easy Come, Easy Go) and Arne Lauwers (Pictureka).  Other winners include: Russell Hornsby (Zhu Zhu Pets), Jack Degnan (Word on the Street), and Seth Calvin (Razor RipRider 360).
• TAGIE Lifetime Achievement award went to Reuben Klamer who invented the game of LIFE which celebrates it’s 50th anniversary in 2010.  His acceptance speech was extremely witty and humorous; it really was a historic moment.  He was also at the HASBRO booth on Saturday autographing copies of LIFE.   So wish I would have gotten one of those.  Instead all I have is a picture, enjoy!
• TAGIE also honored the passing of Betty James the inventor of the Slinky.  Filmmaker and industry expert Tim Walsh did a presentation on her experience within the toy industry and wow was she an amazing woman!  She ran the company on her own after her husband ditched her for a cult. (ouch)  And she is the one responsible for commissioning the Slinky jingle, releasing the lovable Slinky Dog in 1952  – and then years later getting it into Pixar’s Toy Story movie.  Impressive right?

Saturday:

• The Women In Toys breakfast featured great speeches from Mike Hirtle (Hasbro) and Leslie Scott the inventor of Jenga. Leslie spoke about her new book About Jenga and I look forward to interviewing her for the site SO I’m going to keep the rest of the juicy details a secret.

Overall the entire show was awesome!  Bravo to Mary Couzin who puts it together!  If you didn’t make it down to Navy Pier this year – there is always next year!  And during the next couple months I’ll be highlighting some of the product I found there from new inventors.  (Of course I have to play it first!)  So keep checking back – or follow The Game Aisle on Twitter (@TheGameAisle) or join our fan page on Facebook!

The Ball, Big Wheel and the Nintendo Game Boy!

The announcement took place at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY and the items were chosen from twelve nominees which also included: Cabbage Patch Kids, Game of Life, Hot Wheels, Paper Airplane, Playing Cards, Rubik’s Cube, Sidewalk Chalk, Toy Tea Set, and Transformers. The Toy Hall of Fame accepts toy and game nominations all year and on November 5th they announced this year’s nominees biased on a four part criteria which includes: icon-status, longevity, discovery and innovation.

Currently forty-one toys have been accepted into the Hall of Fame including:

Alphabet Blocks, Atari 2600 Game System, Barbie, Baby Doll, Bicycle, Candy Land, Cardboard Box, Checkers, Crayola Crayons, Duncan Yo-Yo, Easy-Bake Oven, Erector Set, Etch A Sketch, Frisbee, G.I. Joe, Hula Hoop, Jack-in-the-Box, Jacks, Jigsaw Puzzle, Jump Rope, Kite, LEGO, Lincoln Logs, Lionel Trains, Marbles, Monopoly, Mr. Potato Head, Play-Doh, Radio Flyer Wagon, Raggedy Ann & Andy, Rocking Horse, Roller Skates, Scrabble, Silly Putty, Skateboard, Slinky, Stick, Teddy Bear, Tinkertoy, Tonka Trucks, and View-Master.

As my own personal commentary here, I agree with most of their past selections and I think that there are plenty more that deserve a spot, but I am disappointed at the low number – and quality of – games within the bunch.  Including today’s inductees, there are only 3 games and 2 electronic gaming systems.  And while I know the history, longevity and icon status of Candy Land, Monopoly and Checkers I would never put them in my own “hall of favorites.” In fact, I can’t say that I’ve played any of them recently – with the exception of Checkers when I played King Me by Winning Moves and thoroughly enjoyed the instant crowing feature.

Games and playthings have been around since the dawn of time.  There are games that have been found in tombs of ancient pharaohs and played by both royalty and peasants throughout the ages.  Maybe that’s part of the problem, it’s hard to see the “innovation” when games like Chess, Dominoes and Mahjong have been the gold standard for so long.

Maybe in the future we will see some more games added to the list.  If you’d like to help that happen – suggest your favorite game by filling out the nomination form here.

For more information on the Strong National Museum of Play or the National Toy Hall of Fame visit www.museumofplay.org.

Periodically I get an email, a comment, a Facebook or LinkedIn message asking me if I can help a someone get a meeting with Hasbro’s inventor relations department.  Typically I say, “Sorry no, I would be seriously damaging my relationship with Hasbro if I did that” (which is the truth) and politely point them in the direction of the TIA’s (Toy Industry Association) website which talks about agents and other options.

What most beginning game inventors don’t realized is that there is a large group of professional inventors out there, commonly referred to as the “inventor community,” and it’s very difficult to break into.  How did I get in?  I worked for a well-know invention firm and I met the right people when I was there.   So how then does a regular Joe (or Jane) become apart of this?  Well they really can’t – at least not until they’ve had a successful item but even then it’s tough.  So how can you get your product seen?  One way is to get an agent.  Do some research here – poke around on the interenet, ask for references.  It’s industry standard for an agent to take 50% of any royalties you get.  It sounds like a lot, but getting a game idea licensed is a big deal and takes a lot of hard work matching a game concept to a manufacturer.  I asked Mike Hirtle, one the inventor relations guys at Hasbro, about how many items he sees a year from the “inventor community” (professional inventors) and of those how many actually make it to market in a typical year.  Here’s what he said:

• 1600 Concepts reviewed from professional inventors (including agents) each year **
• 400 Brought in for further evaluation
• 30-40 Optioned or licensed
• 20-25 Make it to market

**Note that he also adds that for each concept presented to him, there are at least 10 ideas that the inventors have come up with and done at least some work on.  That makes the first number closer to something like 16,000 ideas for the 20 products that make it to market.

Looks pretty bleak, right?  Well that is why it’s important to have an industry veteran on your side – like an agent.

The other route is to self-publish/manufacture your game.  Then organizations like Discover Games run by Mary Couzin can help you out.  She will show your concept all over the country to buyers and inventor relations people with the hopes of either selling product or licensing the concept.  With this method you pay a much smaller royalty (20%) but you still get Mary’s seasoned advice and expertise — and of course the advantage of her giant Rolodex of worldwide contacts.

Whichever route you choose to go, the best place to start is the Toy and Game Inventor’s Expo (TAGIE) in Chicago which is always held the Thursday and Friday before the Chicago Toy and Game Fair (ChiTAG) which is the weekend right before Thanksgiving.  You’ll meet tons of industry experts including buyers, inventors (including me) and inventor relations people, like the Mikes from Hasbro — and it’s the only time they’re available to meet with people outside the “inventor community.”

The conference covers topics from how to get started, to how to publish your game, and what to do once you sell your idea.  It’s an amazing resource and unbelievable that one event was able to get all of these experts and industry gurus in the same place at the same time.  It’s run by Mary Couzin and I asked her what compelled her to start it.  She said:

“I started TAGIE to help toy and game inventors. It is a natural extension of DiscoverGames.com, which is the largest co-op of Indie Board Game Inventors in the World.  I wish it had been around when I started as a board game designer; it would have saved me a lot of time and money.”

Even if you want to go the agent route, Mary has put together a must-see event for any person who has a game idea and wants to grow it.  Hope to see you all there!

• More TAGIE information can be found at ToyAndGameInventors.com
• For more information on Discover Games look here: DiscoverGames.com (check out “Inventor Help: Inventor Wannabes”)
• For the TIA’s page on agents, look here: ToyAssociation.org