Birmingham News, Jun. 1, 2005

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Playing With Your Mind
By Jon Anderson, News staff writer

Birmingham-based mental_floss magazine has partnered with the nation's third-largest game maker to produce a trivia game that follows the quirky periodical's format.

The mental_floss game has just started hitting Books-A-Million stores and will be released next in Borders and Barnes & Noble stores, said David Shapiro, vice president for marketing at Pressman Toy Corp. in New York. In August, it will be available in Target and Toys `R' Us stores, a new market for the mental_floss brand, Shapiro said.

The magazine contains an eclectic mix of stories, arcane facts and trivia on almost any topic imaginable. It is designed to educate and entertain people at the same time and help them "feel smart again."

The idea to create a mental_floss trivia game came from Richard Levy, one of the inventors of Furby interactive stuffed animals and more than 200 other toys and board games, said Will Pearson, a Hoover native who helped found mental_floss magazine while at Duke University.

Levy saw an article on mental_floss in the Los Angeles Times in late 2003 and thought the name was perfect for a board game, Pearson said. He contacted the magazine team, helped develop a game concept and hooked the magazine staff up with Pressman.

"We really liked what we saw," Shapiro said. The quirky, interesting information in the magazine fit nicely into a board game format, he said.

Levy and the folks at Pressman and mental_floss collaborated on the development of the game.

mental_floss staffers, wanting to protect their brand, were nervous at first about losing creative control, but found the people at Pressman to be great partners, Pearson said.

The questions for the trivia game were developed jointly. The Pressman people made sure the questions were written in proper trivia game format, while the magazine staff made sure they had the Mental Floss flair and playful attitude, Pearson said.

The object of the game is to collect six "Piece of Mind" tokens by answering questions correctly. There are "left brain" questions, which cover topics such as science, medicine, geography and geometry, and "right brain" questions, which delve into subjects such as entertainment, literature, the arts and sports.

And, in mental_floss fashion, there's also a question category called "Spot the Big Fat Lie." Players are read two statements and must determine which is false. These are the questions that, with a playful sense of humor, most resemble the magazine's style.

mental_floss co-founder Mangesh Hattikudur and a staff designer developed the concept for the game board, and the Pressman staff made sure the game concept was simple enough to be understood in less than five minutes, Pearson said.

The game is being made in China and costs $24.95.

Copyright © 2005 Birmingham News.