New York's American International Toy Fair February 24, 2011
Hasbro owns the games market. Hasbro has succeeded in buying up all the major players over the years, and they're proving it with new versions of Scrabble, Monopoly, and Cranium in addition to other new offerings on a regular basis. While I'm not crazy about board games personally, it's quite amazing how they built up their game portfolio into some crazy institution. That's why you're going to see The Beatles Monopoly alongside Simon Flash and what seems to be a pimp chalice version of Cuponk this year.
One of the more fascinating items is Jigazo, a customizable jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle comes with software to allow you to make a mosaic of virtually anything out of the same 300 pieces, which is a really nifty idea. I took a lot of pictures below to attempt to illustrate the item, which, my guess is, will be a sleeper or overlooked because you can't sum it up in a twitter-sized sound bite.
And if all this weren't enough, companies like PPW and USAopoly license various Hasbro games to make other versions of them, like Nightmare Before Christmas Scrabble or Nintendo Monopoly. (I do not have a gallery of those this year.) Hail to the board game overlords!
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