Out Of The Box Is All Fun And Games
Area Company Sells Three Of Its Games To Mattel

Wisconsin State Journal
Thursday, October 18, 2007
By JUDY NEWMAN

Don't expect Out of the Box Publishing to go Hollywood now that three of its games - including its hottest seller, Apples to Apples - have been sold to Mattel.

This low-key, offbeat, southern Wisconsin games developer is still a virtual company, its 10 employees spread around the country connected by computer and phone, cooking up games that have no power cord, no battery pack and no pop-culture character to push.

Its motive is simple: "I'm trying to increase the happiness factor of the planet," says president and co-founder Al Waller, of Stoughton.

Games have to meet Out of the Box's three main qualifications, he says:

• Easy enough to learn how to play in two to three minutes.
• Fast enough to finish in 30 minutes or less.
• Fun.

Employees test games on their families, including Waller's five children, ages 11 to 22.

No one is saying publicly how much Mattel paid for card games Apples to Apples, Snorta and Blink. But compared to the $700 million the El Segundo, Calif., toy giant paid in 1998 for the American Girl doll, book and accessories empire in Middleton, "We weren't anywhere close to that; we were a speck," Waller said.

Even before the deal, 3 million Apples to Apples games had been sold and more than a dozen versions published. The Toy Industry Association named it the 2006 game of the year. Mattel plans to build on that with a bigger sales push overseas, said Tim Kilpin, Mattel Brands general manager/senior vice president. "The games we have acquired are easy to understand, family-oriented, and, most of all, fun to play," Kilpin said.

Apples to Apples, a game of wacky comparisons, was Out of the Box's first hit, released in 1999, one year after the company was formed. Today, there are 30 games in the company's stable and others that Out of the Box distributes. The privately owned company, whose only building is a warehouse in Dodgeville, won't release revenues, but in an interview last December, former president Mark Osterhaus said it sells more than 1 million games a year.

Cineplexity, released this year, is a movie-based, "reverse trivia" card game invented by three Madison area men: Jon Michael Rasmus, John Sams and Sean Weitner. It's been selling "extremely well," said Abe Kwiatkowski, senior retail staff at Pegasus Games, 6640 Odana Road. "We've gone through cases and cases and cases of it."

Out of the Box solicits game ideas from the public. Out of more than 1,000 submitted each year, four to eight make it to store shelves, averaging $100,000 each to produce, Waller said.

For the most part, the games are made in China, and that's created new hassles this year since lead paint was found in some Chinese-made toys.

"We have to test every one of our games now and we never had to do that before," said Waller. "It's a huge burden on a little company" that has added to production time and costs.

"Everything we've gotten back (from testing) has passed with flying colors," he said.

Out of the Box
Headquarters: 609 Bennett Road, Dodgeville
Products: Games, including Apples to Apples, Cineplexity, Ten Days in Asia
Employees: 10
Annual revenues: Undisclosed
President: Al Waller, who recently succeeded Mark Osterhaus