ThinkFun, formerly known as Binary Arts, is a toy and board game company founded in 1985 by Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello. The two started the company from the basement of their home in Virginia, with a product base that initially consisted of four games invented by a family friend William Keister (Spin-out, The Cat, The Horse and Hexadecimal Puzzle). The husband and wife team used these products as a launching pad for their company, and within six months they were able to move the company headquarters out of their basement and into a more workable space and were able to begin to expand their product line.

History

ThinkFun was founded in 1985 in the basement of husband and wife team Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello, with the mission "To translate the brilliant ideas of the craziest mathematicians, engineers and inventors into simple toys that can be appreciated by boys and girls around the world." The 1980s were a difficult time in the toy industry. Retailers were moving away from games, and the Rubik's Cube, which had broken through in the mass market, was losing popularity. In 1990 the retail market transformed and the number of

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

s began to increase rapidly. Retail-lifestyle stores looking for specialty products discovered ThinkFun's games and the company grew. From 1992 to 1994, ThinkFun was listed on

Inc 500 ''Inc.'' is an American business media company founded in 1979 and based in New York City. ''Inc.'' publishes several print magazine issues per year, and is anchored by journalistic content online and on social media, focused on entrepreneurship a ...

's fastest growing companies list (#299 in 1992, #261 in 1993 and #396 in 1994). In 1996, ThinkFun released its most successful game to date: ''

Rush Hour A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English, Indian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice e ...

''. Rush Hour, invented by

Nob Yoshigahara Nobuyuki Yoshigahara ( ''Yoshigahara Nobuyuki'', commonly known as "Nob"; May 27, 1936 – June 19, 2004) was a Japanese inventor, collector, solver, and communicator of puzzles.Scott Kim Scott Kim is an American puzzle and video game designer, artist, and author of Korean people, Korean descent. He started writing an occasional "Boggler" column for ''Discover (magazine), Discover'' magazine in 1990, and became an exclusive column ...

, among others, to continue to develop their product line. ThinkFun has focused much of their attention on early learning products geared towards the education of young children with games such as ''Zingo'', ''What's Gnu'', ''Snack Attack'', and ''S'Match''! In 2012, ThinkFun introduced ''Roll & Play'', a game for toddlers. ThinkFun was one of the first toy companies to move into the app market, and versions of its ''Rush Hour'', ''Solitaire Chess'', and ''Chocolate Fix'' games were launched on the iPhone, iPod touch, and Android. In 2017, ThinkFun was acquired by

Ravensburger Ravensburger AG is a German game, puzzle and toy company, publishing house, and market leader in the jigsaw puzzle market. History The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began ...

Cognitive research

ThinkFun has encouraged formal research into problem solving instruction and brain training. The company partnered with the Bunge Cognitive Control and Development Lab at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

, who have used brain imaging to measure the effects of gameplay on reasoning ability. In an initial study, Dr. Silvia Bunge and her team of researchers found that elementary students who played games including ThinkFun's Rush Hour and Chocolate Fix for a total of 20 hours over an 8-week period demonstrated an average increase of 13 points on a measure of performance IQ. ThinkFun and the Bunge Lab later planned a large-scale study that would use

fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...

technology to measure the effects of gameplay on the brain.

Core products

* Zingo! * MathDice & MathDice Jr. * Chocolate Fix * Swish * River Crossing - The perilous plank puzzle * Roll & Play * Solitaire Chess * Distraction * Tipover * PathWords & PathWords Jr. * 36 cube * Hoppers

References

External links

ThinkFun Home Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thinkfun Companies based in Alexandria, Virginia Toy companies of the United States 1985 establishments in Virginia Puzzle manufacturers