Three
for the money
By Lorna Collier
(Rockford Magazine)
Q: What do Robert Angel, Alfred
Butts and Tim Walsh have in common?
A: They all have invented games.
Angel and Butts are the brains
behind Pictionary and Scrabble,
respectively. Walsh, a Roscoe
resident, is co-creator of TriBond, a
board game that's scoring
national acclaim and attracting a growing
legion of fans.
TriBond -- which sells for $30 to
$35 -- works by having players find
the
link, or "bond," between three
seemingly unrelated items. For instance:
What do a gambler, a smoker and a
nun have in common? The answer: They
all have habits.
Rated one of the nation's best
board games by Games Magazine,
Parents' Choice Foundation and
the Chicago Tribune, TriBond has
sold out in specialty stores
across the country. "Customers just love
it," says Jamie Yarolimek,
manager of Kroch's & Brentano's at
CherryVale
Mall, which began stocking the
game last year just before Christmas.
Wal-Mart's northern Illinois and
Wisconsin stores also carry TriBond,
and Toys R Us stores nationwide
recently picked up the game. So far, in
the three years that TriBond has
been on the market, 47,000 copies have
sold -- most within the past
year, says Walsh, whose advertising relies
primarily on word-of-mouth and
radio interviews.
Walsh developed TriBond with two
buddies at Colgate University in
Hamilton, New York, about six
months ago, but never tried to market the
game until 1990, following a
brief career in semipro baseball. He faced
tough odds, though. Of the 1,000
independent games introduced each year,
95 percent never reach store
shelves, says Walsh.
Walsh struck a deal with Product
Sales International, Inc., a Beloit,
Wisconsin, game and puzzle-maker,
to produce TriBond. He then came up
with the game's first supply of
questions. Now Walsh gets new questions
submitted every day from TriBond
aficionados across the United States,
which he is compiling into a
replacement question pack.
And where there's a successful
board game, there's also a chance for a
television game show. Walsh says
that a Los Angeles associate is raising
money to shoot a pilot show based
on TriBond.
All of TriBond's success has
big-game companies knocking on Walsh's
door -- after years of refusing
his calls. Walsh insists, though, that
he
will not sell out. "It's hard to
explain," he says. "I have five years
of my life in this thing. I can't
just say, 'OK, it's yours,' and walk
away."
© Copyright 1993