McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds

With electronic games and toys topping the list of must-haves nearly every season, it’s easy to lose sight of the traditional pastimes like board games. But family game night isn’t ready to be buried just yet; a new generation of kids is taking advantage of this time-honored tradition, which is helping renew the board game industry. The popular games of the past still have their charms, as is evidenced by the still-strong sales numbers for games like Monopoly, Clue, Sorry, and other enduring favorites. But those classics aren’t the only board games making a move among today’s young people; more companies are producing new games that are both educational and fun. Whether the games are based on trivia, math, or strategy, they’re geared for children’s fast-paced attention span and advanced social sensibilities.

McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds is the company that produces You’ve Been Sentenced!, a language-based board game for ages 8 and up. The game has a simple premise: Each player gets 10 cards with random words on them. The goal is to build understandable sentences with the words dealt. Players may have to get quite creative in order to get their sentences to make sense; this is where the “jury” comes in. The jury is comprised of the others players, who get to judge whether the sentence created makes grammatical and/or logical sense. The player who made the sentence is given the chance to justify his or her sentence to the jury. If the justification holds, the player earns points; if not it’s the next player’s turn to give it a whirl. You can make sentences as short as two words, but you earn extra points for using more of your sentence cards.

While McNeill Design’s product line isn’t very big, their vision is extensive. McNeill is on a mission to promote smart, fast-paced educational games to today’s kids. The company has been recognized by multiple organizations and has earned several awards, including the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award, iParenting Hot Media Award, the National Parenting Seal of Approval, and more.

The company has recently added some more products to their line, including Twisted Fish, an updated version of the classic Go Fish, as well as many more sentence card add-ons for You’ve Been Sentenced!, covering topics like space, cooking, sports and pop culture, so the sentence-building — and learning — can go on and on.

If games are part of your retail plans, check out www.mcneilldesigns.com