The bestselling board games on Amazon.com are:
1. 2. 3.
4. 5.
(For those of you reading via RSS, the above don't display properly, so here they are: 1. Settlers of Catan, 2. Blokus, 3. Scrabble Deluxe, 4. Scrabble, 5. Apples to Apples crate)
And you were expecting Monopoly, Sorry, and Candyland, perhaps? I'm encouraged, because these are all great games, worthy of being best sellers.
What have the other stores got?
Toys-R-Us
1. Knockdown Blocktown Domino Building Set - Construction Site - I didn't realize that this was a board game.
2. Cars Later Mater game - Looks like a Perfection variant, from the recent movie.
3. Deal or No Deal - From the NBC TV show. Some sort of press your luck game.
4. Chutes and Ladders
5. Monopoly Junior
Sigh.
Barnes and Nobles
1. Apples to Apples crate
2. Rush Hour
3. Scrabble
4. I Spy in Common - find matched characteristics within a time limit.
5. Loaded Questions - guess which person gave which answer to a question.
Better than TRU, but still ...
boardgames.com
1. Trivial Pursuit DVD '80s edition
2. James Bond 007 Monopoly
3. Sudoku 5x5
4. Cars Later Mater game
5. Deal or No Deal
Pathetic.
Walmart
1. Tengamo Series 1, 3-Pack - somce sort of collectible magnet game.
2. Scene It? Disney DVD Game
3. Family Feud DVD Game Show
4. Cranium Hullabaloo Game - number six on Amazon
5. Elefun Game - A tower shoots pieces of paper into the air which the playes have to catch with butterfly nets.
Proving that either children really want more electronics in their board games, or parents think that they do. Or that the people who shop at Walmart are easily distracted.
KB Toys
1. Pictionary
2. Trouble
3. Candy Land
4. Connect Four, travel edition
5. Sorry
Ugh. Either the store is aimed at much younger children, or the people who shop there are buying games as gifts, rather than to actually play them.
Meanwhile, on our side of the world:
Funagain
1. Rage
2. Carcassonne: the Discovery
3. Havoc: the Hundred Years War
4. Carcassonne
5. Queen's Necklace
TimeWellSpent
1. Thurn and Taxis
2. El Grande, Decennial edition
3. Goa
4. Settlers of Catan
5. Carcassonne
So, does that make Amazon one of us? How is it that Amazon shoppers have some taste and knowledge, while the rest of them don't?
Yehuda
2 comments:
Hi Yehuda. Just discovered your blog last week and really like it.
Anyway, to answer your question, the reason shoppers at American chain stores don't have any taste is because there isn't anything good to choose from. I decided to stop into a Toys-R-Us once and the only games of interest were some variations of Risk and Stratego. The board game section was actually quite large, but the selection was absolutely awful. It's not that consumers don't know any better (though many don't), they simply don't have the option of discovering good games.
Amazon, on the other hand, has far greater range and the cream rises to the top. I don't know why managers of chain stores don't get better games, but they don't. Maybe it's a marketing thing. Fortunately, I live near Boston, and "Games People Play" is a brick and mortar store that has a huge selection of great games along with knowledgeable staff.
Very true, dolsen. Only, now that Amazon has these games as best sellers, when will the rest of the game stores catch on?
Yehuda
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