Tantrix wins top UK award

The Tantrix Game Pack won the Good Toy 'Gold Award' for the best product in the Games category after fending off stiff competition from some of the world's best games and some of the biggest companies in the industry - a considerable achievement for a relatively small company like ourselves and even more so for Tantrix inventor Mike McManaway over in New Zealand!

The Good Toy Awards, run by the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries (NATLL), are the most prestigious toy awards in the UK. Rigorous play-testing is carried out by childcare professionals, parents, teachers and most of all children in homes and schools throughout the country. Toys are assessed and awarded marks out of 10 on a wide range of criteria such as skill development, play value, safety and benefits for those with special needs.

In the end, it is the opinions of people who have really spent time playing with the products that help to establish the winners in the various categories and those are the opinions that matter most to us too!

For 30 years, the NATLL has been publishing the results of these tests annually in their Good Toy Guide, the longest-established and also the most authoritative consumer guide to quality toys available in the UK.

Only the top 15 products in the Games category appeared in the 2003 guide - six were 'Recommended', six were 'Highly Recommended' and three won awards.

The two 'Silver Awards' went to a couple of other family favourites, Rummikub and Globetrotting, before Tantrix was announced as the 'Gold Award' winner. As shown on the left, Julia Schwarz, a former World Tantrix Champion and now our Marketing and Design Manager, collected the award at the ceremony in a London hotel.

In the Good Toy Guide itself, it says: "A good progression of difficulty levels means this game will be loved by adults and can be introduced to children as young as 6. The series of games are great for teaching children problem solving and logic skills."Tantrix is also described as "an ideal travel game" which helps to develop skills in the following areas: "science and problem solving; concentration and observation; hand-eye co-ordination and small movements; creativity and imagination."