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T-SHIRT
WAR!!
15
Essential Moments To Revisit If You Had A Time Machine
"I bought Zombie Fluxx for a friend on
thinkgeek.com as a gag gift, little did I know we'd end up playing
this game anywhere we need entertainment and a table of some
kind is available. Absolutely addicted! So I decided just to
buy everything Fluxx related." -- Bryon B, comments
with order # 107994
Rash provides another
batch of links and commentary on topics including: the 2010 Shanghai
World Expo, Pyongyang Traffic Girls, the Twelve Biggest Ripoffs
in America, 'Ten-Eleven' lay-offs at his job, the 1950s paperback
cover artist Richard Powers, cherry tree blossoms , London to
Brighton in 4 minutes (and other hi-speed train videos), Shiny
Shiny (a History of the CD Revival from the year 2021), the Space
Art of Robert McCall, the Power of Pink, Blade Runner Tokyo,
Early Monorails, Totalitarian Architecture of the Third Reich.,
Barrow, Alaska , a report on his trip back east, to DC and NYC,
the revolutionary new spray-on liquid glass, attempts to start
a redesign of American currency, Fifty Reasons why Tokyo's the
greatest place, Matisse Redux, Masculinity in a Spray Can, Trends
men wear that women hate, Cycloc bike storage brackets, the wheeled
snow shovel, failed modern architectures, Kunstler's Eyesore
of the Month, and JD Salinger.
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Toy Fair / Ki'ana & Sadaf
/ Happy 60th Anniversary Mom & Dad! |
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 Welcome
back! Sorry I've been gone so long, we've been having a very
busy late-wintertime. Just after my
last update, we got hit with an amazing double-blizzard just
as we were preparing for Toy Fair, and I feel like it's been
a roller-coaster since then.
Toy Fair was a big success for us, easily our best ever. We
launched the new versions of EcoFluxx
and Family
Fluxx and we wrote lots of orders and took lots of leads.
Shown here is our beautiful new booth display and this year's
staff: from right to left that's our Sales Director Jessica,
President Kristin, Sales Support / Inventory Manager Alison,
and our new Sales Rep Manager David Hartzband. David has over
20 years of experience in the Specialty Toy Market with companies
including Briar Patch and Mattel. He's a fan of our games, and
collects mediaeval knights.
Speaking of new faces, we have two new lovely ladies working
in our office at this time. We currently have two office temps
filling our part-time sales support position (which was done
last year by Nikki,
Susannah,
and Mo).
On the left is Ki'ana, and that's Sadaf on the right.
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  Ki'ana and Sadaf
are both college students, so working on alternating afternoons
suits their schedules fine.
Ki'ana, who's originally from New Jersey, is very family-oriented
and in her spare time she loves to sing, dance, travel and go
bowling. Ki'ana attends PGCC and is majoring in Criminal Justice.
Sadaf was born in Iran and raised here. She's a very active
person who loves traveling to different countries and learning
more about other cultures. Sadaf is attending the University
of Maryland and majoring in Communications.
Ki'ana and Sadaf have been busy ever since Toy Fair working
on the task of entering all the new leads we got at Toy Fair
into our online system.
Speaking of Toy Fair, you may have noticed that I wasn't on
the staff list. I was excused from working the booth this year,
and was only on staff during setup and breakdown. In between,
I returned home, and took part in a big celebration of my parents'
60th wedding anniversary.
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The party was a big success. Lots of their lifelong friends
turned out to join in the fun, and since relatives from all over
flew in for the occasion, it was also a fabulous family reunion.
Here's a few photos of Mom & Dad and the assembled Looneys...
 
 
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Congrats on 60 years and love to you both Mom & Dad!
 After
the party, I was pleased to have some quality time with Rash,
my brother from California. I took him with me on the road trip
back to NYC, and he helped us with the tear-down and pack-out
of our booth. Then he wandered off into the Big Apple, from whose
airport he flew home a few days later.
Lots of other stuff has been going on since then, but one
of the most exciting things that's been taking up my time lately
is currently a big secret. I'm super excited about it though...
it's been playtesting really well, and I think it's gonna be
a big hit. It's a new card game based on a licensed property,
so until all the contracts are signed, I cannot say what it is.
But Kristin had some excellent negotiations with Their People
at Toy Fair, and we're hoping to announce our big fall release
at the upcoming GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas.
In other news, I've been making great progress in restoring
order and repurposing the spaces at Wunderland.Earth. Having
moved many of our business and life operations over to Pepperland,
and after the broken-water-heater-basement-flooding-incident,
our original house has been a horrible mess for these past many
months. But now at last, most areas in the house are cleaned
up and organized again. In particular, we've finally gotten one
of the rooms redone as a space we can rent out, and plan to take
in our first tenant next month. (More on that story as it develops...)
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 Most
recently, we've just finished up our annual Stockholders Meeting.
This was also our best Stockholder's meeting, since we not only
got a great turnout from among our local investors, but were
also able to include via speakerphone those who couldn't attend
in person. Best of all, we were reporting on a very good year,
easily our best ever. (I know, I keep saying that!) It's very
satisfying to be able to say we were profitable last year, considering
the state of the economy and the size of our staff! And the future
is even brighter...
 Thanks for reading, happy springtime, thanks
for playing our games, and have a great Whenever!
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Although my time there was very limited, while at Toy Fair
I did get to meet Jared Sorensen, inventor of the Parsely
system. Not only that, but Jared actually got to play in a session
of my Muffins game run by Alison one evening during the show.
It was great hearing his reactions to my take on his system,
and we had fun talking about game design. |
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I recently concoted a new chocolate-lover's
dessert (with a bit of inspiration from Robin and some help from
one of the waiters at our local diner). I call it a Chocolate
Split. It's basically a banana split, but without any of that
pesky fruit (except for cherries on the top, which are fun to
give away). Cookies 'n' cream replaces the strawberry scoop in
the traditional trio (along with chocolate and vanilla as usual),
then brownie bits or cookie crumbles replace the banana slices,
and finally, the toppings are limited to hot fudge, caramel,
and whipped cream. Yum! Now I can get what I want in the king-size
serving one receives with a 3-scoop split, instead of having
to settle for a mere 2-scoop goblet-style sundae. |
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Here are my favorite In-Be-Tweets (these being posts I've
made to Twitter
since my last update of Wunderland.com):
- has been out in the blizzard, shoveling our walkways &
pulling the huge fallen tree branch off of our buried car. Yay!
No broken windshield! [Feb 6th]
- thought he was going to lose that game of Hearts, but managed
to pull ahead of John at the end by Shooting the Moon a couple
of times [Feb 11th]
- also really enjoyed Chris Wood's post at BGG about their
house rules for Chrononauts
[Feb 15th]
- thought Avatar was ok (and it certainly looked AMAZING).
It was like Lawrence of Arabia meets Star Wars with a touch of
Aquaman stirred in [Feb 21st]
- has been having a great meeting with Kristin, plotting and
scheming about various future plans and secret projects [Mar
10th]
- is enjoying a poem written by his niece Sharon called "Ode
to Chocolate Cake," ending with the wonderful phrase "the
quiet dignity of cake." [Mar 11th]
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