Basic Concept: Simple Fun

You'd be forgiven for not recognizing the names Jon Meyers and Dean Tzembelikos. They're part of the vast community of Western ex-pats earning a living and building businesses providing goods to international markets from the harried shores of Hong Kong. But this year, they're moving to make a mark in America, introducing their company, Basic Concepts, and their board games to U.S. consumers with a small but interesting assortment of titles.

And while that sounds like a perfectly plausible strategy—build up an international business FOB out of Hong Kong, then enter the North American market—in reality, it wasn't that simple. And in fact, that wasn't the plan at all. For Basic Concepts, the route to America was a classic case of necessity being the mother of invention.

The company got its start as a sales rep for the international trade, Tzembelikos tells Playthings, “but then, basically in 12 months, we saw our four major accounts go down, at which point we said, 'I guess the clock is ticking.' At that point, you either have to put your money where your mouth is and start making some product or find a new job. Rolling the dice, we've somehow managed to make it work.”

What Basic Concepts has done to date is bring to market several addictively simple action games of the kind that turn easily into long-lived classics. Blast Box, for one, is just a balloon in a box that kids then drive play nails through while hoping theirs is not the nail that makes the balloon go pop. Wet Head has players pass around a hat with a built-in reservoir of water and take turns, Russian roulette-style, at pulling out one of its plugs with the hope that the plug you pull isn't the one that releases the water—onto yourself.

But, because in today's market non-licensed action games may not be enough to get Basic Concepts the shelf space at major retailers it so desires, the company's primary push is instead an assortment of 3-D, pop-up board games with a little higher wow factor. The debut titles, Treasure of the Lost Pyramid and Haunted Ruins, will be augmented with comic books and a Web presence for a brand the company's calling Relic Raiders and that it believes will help the games hold their own against others' licensed titles.

The games “have been received incredibly well by those,” Tzembelikos says. “The concept is highly visual and the platform is unique—and patented. Everyone who has seen them has said, 'Wow, that's pretty cool. I've never seen anything like that.'”