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Brand Profile - Funko Games
Funko Games proves there’s “more to Funko than Pop” through its reimagination of Cranium games
Toy World spoke to the senior director of Games at Funko, Stephan Brissaud, about the launch and what he hopes it will bring to players, the brand and Funko Games.
In January this year, Hasbro and Funko Games announced a multi-year partnership to introduce Cranium to a new audience of millennials and their families for the game’s 25th anniversary. The relaunch of Cranium, as well as its extension games Hullabaloo and Hoopla, officially took place at the UK Games Expo last month.
Cranium was first introduced to the market in 1998. Its clever design combines several popular party game activities across art, trivia, language and performance into one game, creating an experience where ‘everyone shines’. The one-of-a-kind game became a near-instant success at launch, becoming profitable in just six months before taking the title of the fastest-selling independent board game ever in 2001. The game and its iconic Creative Cat, Data Head, Word Worm and Star Performer characters spawned half-a-dozen other sub-brands in just 10 years before being sold to Hasbro in 2008.
Along with the Cranium boardgame reinvention, Funko Games has rebooted Hoopla and Hullabaloo and also created a brand-new puzzle game Big Brain, in which kids need to search for different Cranium characters.
Cranium: 25th Anniversary Edition had been well received by the games industry even before the launch at the Games Expo.
Stephan says: “Industry people are familiar with the original game and veterans like myself – I was a buyer in a retail store when Cranium first launched 25 years ago – are excited about the relaunch. The original game had conventional gameplay with each player was playing individually, but in our version you are playing in two teams. The original game had 15 activities, but we have activated three more to increase the fun.”
At the moment, the game is only available in English. “Our challenge is really the localisation,” explains Stephan. “You really need to adapt – some of the questions are very geographically weighted. For example, the American version has questions about American football. We soon hope to start work on developing localisation – initially we’re looking at French, German, Spanish and Italian.”
The designers of the original Cranium game were two Microsoft engineers who played a lot of boardgames. They would get frustrated because one of them was very good at art, so when they were playing Pictionary, he would always win. They created this game with the tagline “the game where everybody shines” because the four main categories: Data Head, Word Worm, Creative Cat, and Star Performer were designed to give everyone around the table an opportunity to dominate in a challenge.
In the new version by Funko Games, the four original characters are back, but with 800 all-new questions and challenges across 18 classic and new activities. The game includes sketching, acting, humming, sculpting, picturepuzzling and word unscrambling.
Stephan says: “Because boardgames today are much more ubiquitous than 25 years ago, they are less and less confined to simple activities or rules. Friends and family getting together for games night has become increasingly popular as a social activity. That has meant we were able to adapt Cranium to an audience which is a lot more used to boardgames and introduce some quirkier activities. For example, one of them is like puppeteering, where you make another player act something out by moving their limbs.”
To support the 25th anniversary launch, Funko Games has initiated a heavyweight digital advertising campaign across different social media platforms, working closely with key influencers. Last month, a pilot event was launched with independent coffee chain 200 Degrees Coffee Shop, based in the Midlands, to host activations and demos across the cafés.
“The idea comes from the genesis of Cranium,” explains Stephan. “The Microsoft engineers who designed Cranium happened to be playing golf with Howard Schultz, the owner of Starbucks. On the golf course one weekend, they told Howard about the game, and they made a deal that Cranium would be put on sale in Starbucks. At the start, Starbucks was the only place where you could buy Cranium. We are going back to the roots through this partnership with coffee shops in the UK.”
Funko has an extensive catalogue of licences through its Pop and collectibles, and Stephan plans to leverage these relationships for its games portfolio moving forward. He says: “When there is a new popular movie or IP coming out, we make a Pop of the characters, and we know that consumers will snap them up because they’re limited edition. We don’t have that limited edition aspect for the games and the games market is a very competitive environment, but our knowledge and existing relationships in licensing are a unique advantage that we can use.”
Another advantage that Funko Games is proud of is the people behind the games in their game design studio Prospero Hall, formerly Forrest-Pruzan Creative; an existing studio that Funko acquired which had been designing boardgames for more than 25 years. The designers have worked with top games companies including Asmodee, Ravensburger and Kosmos, and developed multiple award-winning boardgames incorporating top-tier licences for all ages, including Disney Villainous, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Bob Ross – Art of Chill and Choose Your Own Adventure – House of Danger.
Many of Funko Games’ designers come from the movie industry which helps to bring games to life. Stephan explains: “We have that perfect situation where we have storytellers who have access to a great catalogue of licences and instead of telling you a story in a movie format, they tell you a story through a boardgame. Our adaptations like Back to the Future or ET or Rear Window stem from us watching the movie and deciding to make a game about it because we love it. All aspects of the games are tied to the themes and stories in the movies.”
