Inside Out

Approximately 1,253,770 minutes of game play were logged from September through December as part of the most recent Million Minute Family Challenge. Each year, puzzle and game maker Patch Products, Beloit, Wis., has organized the Family Challenge to help encourage interaction and communication among family and friends by setting a national goal of game playing for 1 million minutes throughout the four month period. More than 200 groups, clubs, classes and families registered, and the Lam family of Newaygo, Mich., recorded the most minutes with 6,905. The 1.25-million-minute total is the longest recorded since the challenge started in 2001 … Scratch-and-win lotto games just got more fun. New York-based Scientific Games' licensing subsidiary, MDI Entertainment, and Hasbro, Pawtucket, R.I., have signed a multi-year agreement to bring 20 Hasbro brands to multiple lottery platforms like instant and pull-tab tickets, online and mobile games. Key properties in the deal include Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Yahtzee, Boggle, Scrabble and The Game of Life … Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark., opened 70 new locations last month in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and several other states … Middleton, Wis.-based American Girl, a division of Mattel, will open an American Girl Boutique and Bistro, an experiential shop where girls can have birthday parties, get their doll's hair done at the Doll Hair Salon or have brunch in the Bistro. Stores are slated to open in two upscale shopping centers in Dallas and Atlanta in mid-to-late 2007... Kids are more tech-savvy than we think. Approximately 25 percent of kids, ages 2 to 14, are watching downloaded movies, television, music videos or online streaming video content, according to the recent Kids & Digital Content study by The NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y.