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 …

For a month or so now, I’ve wanted to write an article about “house rules” because in my family we have house rules for a slew of our favorite games.  In Boggle only 4-letter words count, in the Game of Life if you don’t like your occupation you can start over and try for a new one, and so on.  It’s not that we don’t like the rules as they are; we’ve just tailored them to fit our family.   And we’re not the only ones that do it.  Free Parking …

Recently I was on the ThinkFun website and saw the big ad for the iPad and iPhone Rush Hour apps saying “Now even more ways to play in traffic!” This made me chuckle. Why? Because I live in Chicago, where despite a state-wide ban, 80% of drivers are txting, emailing or talking on their cell phones while driving so really we don’t need more ways to “play in traffic.”

So earlier this week I was at a Dunkin Donuts picking up a cup of coffee and they’re running the promotion where they have the little peel-off trivia cards on their coffee cups and since I love trivia, it was a nice morning bonus!  I peeled mine off and took a pretty educated guess – because, I had no real idea when the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were introduced – but I was right and won a donut.  (it’s 1972, just FYI)  Now my coffee cohort took a different approach and …

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!
In its current state Toy Fair is a mix of large companies with small (if any) booths, medium …