Industry colleagues and the public have selected winners for the eighth annual Toy & Game Inventor of the Year Awards. At this year’s storytelling-themed awards ceremony, excellence was recognized in the categories Toy Design, Game Design, Rising Star, Excellence in Game Design, Young Inventor, and Digital/Toy Game. A closeted jury of industry-based judges also chose the winners of the Hassenfeld Humanitarian Award, In Memoriam, and Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mark Boudreaux, inventor of Star Wars Millennium Falcon, won Excellence in Toy Design; Laurie Peterson, designer of Malia’s Beach House, Marine Rescue Center, and more from Build & Imagine, won the Rising Star Designer Award; Elan Lee, Matthew Inman, and Shane Small, designers of Exploding Kittens, won Excellence in Game Design; Duncan and Hayden, inventors of Two Bros Bows, won the Young Inventor of the Year award; Adam Wilson and Ian Bernstein, inventors of Sphero’s BB-8, won Best Digital Toy or Game.
The Hassenfeld Family Humanitarian Award will go to Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago; this year’s In Memoriam Award will honor Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin, co-founders of Wham-O; and the Lifetime Achievement Award will go to Richard Maddocks, who started at Matchbox in 1971, became an independent inventor, and then Tiger Electronics and Hasbro, where he helped bring Furby and FurReal Friends to market.
