From The Roanoke Times Newspaper, 11/12/06

Roanoke Store Can Raise a Ruckus

Jenny Kincaid Boone

Roanoke now has Ruckus. The popular card game packaged in a blue box now is available at a local toy store, Imagination Station on Franklin Road, inside the Townside Festival Center and beside Montano’s International Gourmet.

Ruckus rose to popularity earlier in the year when an independent toy store in Blacksburg, Imaginations Toy & Furniture Co., couldn’t keep the games on its shelves.

In June, the owner of the Blacksburg store, Paula Bolte, bought the independently-owned Imagination Station. She’s building up a Ruckus stock inside the store but act now if you want to buy the game during the holiday season, Bolte said. That’s because her store in Blacksburg sold out of Ruckus before December last year.

Bolte recently ordered a stock of 1,000 games for the holidays.

Ruckus inventor, Dan Levy who lives in a suburb of Chicago, came to Roanoke and Blacksburg last week to promote the game which was named one of the 10 most wanted card games earlier this year by TD Monthly, a trade magazine for the toy and game industry.

For more information about Ruckus, visit http://www.funstreetgames.com

From the Smith Mountain Eagle Newspaper, 05/30/06

New card game creates 'Ruckus' at Lake

By REBECCA JACKSON, Smith Mountain Eagle

A card game conceived in the Windy City is about to take Smith Mountain Lake by gale force if sales perform phenomenally as they have in other localities across the nation.

In a couple communities, Ruckus has caused an uproar befitting its name. The game is now being sold at The Cottage Gate in Westlake Towne Center.

Well aware of the bluster Ruckus is causing elsewhere, and the flurry of sales, Cottage Gate owner Twila Tolley placed "the largest first-time order anywhere," said Dan Levy, president of Funstreet, Inc. (www.funstreetgames.com) and creator of Ruckus.

The manufacturer is located in Northfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It's a small enterprise, according to Levy, whose 11-year-old daughter served as her father's chief consultant and critic in the early stages of the game's development.

Players read through the instructions once, play a practice round, and they're good to go. The deck consists of six cards each of 12 random images (think computer icons) like "Head Monster", "Monkey in a Bottle," "Around the Block," and "Solar Power". Players need pens and paper handy, because they work toward a point total for the win. The dealer gives each player seven cards, face down. They pick up the cards and the game is on. Everyone plays at once. First, players put down their matches, then use single cards to steal other people's matches. After everyone has completed their moves for the moment, the dealer hands out an additional card to all the players, face down. This continues until one player plays their second to last card, puts their last card in the middle (face down), and says, "Out."

Each hand lasts about three minutes, and children as young as four can play because only icon recognition, not reading comprehension, is needed.

"Everyone who plays it, buys it," said the owner of a toy store in Oregon. "It's really a fun game, for all ages. It's chaos. The more players you have, the more chaotic it gets. People like it."

"There's no turn-taking," Levy noted. "It's dynamic, perpetual, with everybody eyeballing each other."

On the market a less than a year, Ruckus already has garnered a lengthening list of laurels awarded in the toy industry, including Dr. Toy 10 Best Games, Parenting Media Award, Preferred Choice Award, Parents' Choice Fun Stuff Award, Dr. Toy 100 Best Children's Products and the National Parenting Center Seal of Approval.

From the Frederick News-Post, 05/30/06

They've got all of the right moves

By Jon Stewart, News-Post Staff

A downtown store's sales of a new card game has raised quite a ruckus in independent toy store circles.

"Ruckus" has done tremendous business for Dancing Bear, said owner Tom England. "Our most popular game had been 'Blink,' and we sold 65-70 a month," he said. "'Ruckus' sales have steadily risen without the peaks and valleys common to most toys and games."

Mr. England said it is too early to say if the card game will be the best seller ever.

An independent toy store competes with the big box stores by selling products that the big box store doesn't sell, Mr. England said. "We distinguish ourselves by selling customers something different. We focus on training, customer service and product knowledge."

Mr. England's employees learn to play every game or work every toy in the store. There is a demo of every store item so customers can play, he said.

"Most potential customers have never seen these games," Mr. England said. "We like to say our products either have never been seen or have never been seen in forever."

The goal of the independent store is to be different from the mass-market store, said Kathleen McHugh, executive director of ASTRA, the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, a trade organization.

The small stores can't compete with the mass-market stores and don't want to, Ms. McHugh said. The first question a small store owner will ask a manufacturer is whether the toy or game is in the mass market, she said. "The small store won't stock the item if it is."

Mr. England cited a very popular card game that he used to stock — "Apples to Apples" — as a game that was a specialty store game that attracted the interest of the big box stores.

"We invested a lot of money in the game," he said. "We were told the game would never go mass market. But four years later, that's just what happened."

"Ruckus" is too new to be considered mass market and won't be for several years, Mr. Levy said. A game or toy inventor can't turn away from the earnings potential a mass market store represents, he said.

"When a transition (to mass market) occurs, it is not uncommon for missteps," Mr. Levy said. "For a card game, for example, a mass market store will want to change the original box that's 6 inches by 5 inches by 1.5 inches that includes a vac tray (a tray the size of the inside of the box that cradles the cards).

"Instead, the mass market store will want a tuck box (a box that just covers the cards, such as a deck of regular playing cards). That lowers the standards and won't fly because the larger box and vac tray project value."

Mr. England said that the tuck box lowers the overhead in manufacturing the game, thus lowering the retail price further.

"We sold so many 'Apples to Apples' that we got the highest discount the manufacturer offered," Mr. England said. "We could compete with the big-box stores for price but not for volume; we couldn't sell as many games as one big-box store alone."

Mr. England and other specialty store owners use the straight keystone method of pricing: Every retailer buys for $1 and sells for $2, and the extra dollar pays for the overhead.

The "Blink" game is now mass market, Mr. England said. That means that if a specialty store were to buy a "Blink" game for $3, the game would be sold for $6.

"The big-box store can sell the game for $4.50 because the store could sell thousands of games," Mr. England said.

Dancing Bears has toys from $1 to $175 for a table and two chairs that feature a Noah's Ark theme and images carved on the edges, he said.

The Dancing Bears Web site is being upgraded with a full e-commerce capability. The store already mails some items. For the larger items, Mr. England has worked out an agreement with the manufacturers to ship directly to the customer.

"The update is a large investment," he said. "Everything in stock has to be on the new site."

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 04/26/06

Local toy store helps raise a Ruckus for new card game

By Virginia Linn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There's a little celebration planned Saturday at a small Greensburg toy store that gives a glimpse of how innovation, gimmickry, and a little luck can help a new game break into the cutthroat toy market.

Angel's Toy Barn in the Westmoreland Mall is hosting a free "Learn and Play" Ruckus tournament. Never heard of Ruckus? That's probably not surprising, as it's sold only in 500 specialty stores across the country and on the Web site of the creator's company, Funstreet Inc. It's in 10 locations in Pennsylvania, including two in this region. The other is Party Ants in Sewickley.

But if you visited Angel's Toy Barn, there's a good chance you'd walk out with a $10 deck.

"We have one open in the store, and people have a chance to play it with us," said Natalie Reese, the store manager. "If they play it, they normally end up leaving with it. It's a big hit for our store."

Ruckus is simple to learn. The deck consists of cards bearing quirky images such as Monkey in a Bottle or Fish Man. Players are dealt seven cards and immediately place all sets of two or more matching cards from their hand face up on the table. As soon as they hit the table, they're worth points but can be stolen by any player with a matching card in his or her hand. That's where the fun comes in (and a "ruckus"). Rounds go fast, and the game is over when the first player gets rid of all his cards.

"People get a huge kick out of stealing someone's matches," Ms. Reese said.

Mr. Levy, 48, of Northfield, Ill., created Ruckus after growing bored with selling mutual funds and insurance for 20 years. After much research, he decided to market the game exclusively to specialty toy stores to give it a better chance of standing out among the estimated 1,000 games introduced each year.

"They live and die being able to find products not available in the mass market," he said about independent toy stores. "If you stick it in a Target or Wal-Mart, the employees are not going to learn anything about the product or know anything about the product."

He also made a point to send a deck to most employees in every specialty store so each would take it home and play it with his or her family, which store owners said is unusual.

"That's one reason we sell it more. We know it," said Ms. Reese, 26. "We play it a lot." It appeals to all ages, she added. One 16-year-old employee played it constantly with her mother, and the toy store owner's 5-year-old son loves it.

"Everybody can have fun playing it," said Stevanne Auerbach, aka Dr. Toy, a San Francisco child development expert who rates the quality of toys.

She said stores such as Angel's Toy Barn understand the value of active participation and showcasing a product.

"You rarely go into a dress store without trying something on. This is the same thing with games and toys. The big box toy stores haven't gotten the message. The fact that 30 Toys R Us stores have closed over the past year -- they're not building their customer base, they're not friendly to their customer."

Demand for Ruckus at some stores has been so high that decks are sold as soon as they come in or there are waiting lists, Mr. Levy said.

What makes a game a hit -- even in specialty toy stores -- could be the difference in neighborhood demographics or just capturing the attention of a child. According to game experts, it takes four years before a new game hits its stride. And 98 percent of new game companies are gone within two years.

For now, Levy plans to keep his product in independent toy stores and "grow it slow."

Time will tell if he makes it.

"It's a real long shot for a single person to take a product and run with it and make it work," said Ms. Auerbach. "But that's what happened to Slinky."