10 minute read
Company Profile - Winning Moves
Winning Moves stays triumphant
Gabriela Jiménez García visited Winning Moves in London, where she met with head of UK Retail Sales, Kieran McNamara, and Marketing manager, Katie Hearne, to discuss the company's biggest successes this year. The team also shared insights about what to expect from Winning Moves during the Golden Quarter and much more.
How has 2025 gone so far for Winning Moves?
KM: It’s been a steady start for us. Traditionally, a significant portion of our sales occurs during the golden quarter. We are a global licensee for Hasbro, with licensed versions of Monopoly, Guess Who?, Cluedo and other games traditionally in the higher price point range, frequently purchased as Christmas presents. Nevertheless, among our IP products we also have Top Trumps (a classic Christmas stocking filler), along with Waddingtons Playing Cards and Whot!, and Pass the Pigs; these all sit within that sub £15 price point range that seems to resonate with consumers currently and continue to deliver strong year-round sales.
We see this year so far as ‘steady’ when compared to 2025 when we successfully launched our brand-new World Football Stars Top 200 Top Trumps range, packs 1 to 6, Starter Kit and Collectors Kit, featuring the best male and female players across the world. The first pack was launched in July, and new packs were introduced each month all the way through to November, enhancing the collectability aspect of the range. Top Trumps does not sit in the Trading Card Games space, and is traditionally seen as a wholesome, cognitive and educational game, so we felt it was important to speak directly to the fandoms who grew up loving Top Trumps and wanting the packs as soon as possible. As such, we will make the next series available all in one go, ready for a certain big Footballing event in 2026. We believe this approach to be more impactful and also easier for retailers than taking the new packs one at a time over an extended period.
If we compare what we’re expecting from our fiscal year next year versus this year, we expect to see another climb. We’re all really excited about the products coming through in Q4 and about some of the listings we already have with retail partners.
What have been your most successful launches this year?
KM: Top Trumps World Football Stars Guess Who? has gone down well. We generally launch a football version of Guess Who? every two to three years, but this year we’ve worked with Hasbro to introduce a Guess Who? with a fun twist, as character cards come with Top Trumps game play. World Football Stars Guess Who? was one of the top-selling products in Q4 last year, as well as the year before, according to Circana data, and this new launch has had an amazing start. We’re already in the top 500 on Amazon for Toys and Games, at time of writing, and we only launched in mid-August.
We’ve also launched new limited editions of Top Trumps, aimed at wider fandoms such as Millennials and Gen Z. New ranges include Squid Game Top Trumps Limited Edition, which comes in sleek plastic packaging that resembles a retro cassette tape player. The How to Train Your Dragon edition of Top Trumps, which launched in August, has also been very well received. We release new packs of licensed Top Trumps every year, aligned to new trends and popular cinematic and gaming releases.
In the pre-school sphere, Bluey and Peppa Pig versions of Guess Who? launched in the past few months. We have a strong desire to remain at the forefront of educational gaming and cognitive learning. Games like Guess Who? are complementary to memory development in children, and these new pre-school versions are tapping into the growing interest for licensed and education games.
Are there any upcoming launches for Q4 that you’re particularly excited about?
KM: We’re excited about our brand-new educational game, Goddit!, which is launching this Q4. The game consists of five different puzzle games in one, including spot-the-difference and labyrinth/maze. Players take turns to turn over a card, and the first person to solve the puzzle displayed on the card shouts out ‘Goddit!’, winning the card. Goddit taps into the market for ‘play n go’, with a quick 15-20 minutes of gameplay, as well as consumer price points at the sweet spot of sub £15. We’ve already had amazing feedback and listings with our retail partners, and we’re expecting big things from the game. Its versatility is a standout feature, as it can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. It’s also compact and can be taken on the go during road trips and holidays to keep children entertained, or can even be played at parties or gatherings. Goddit has been selected for lots of autumn/winter ranges, and will be supported by extensive marketing plans this Q4 and beyond.
Other innovations coming through include gift sets for some of our Top Trumps ranges, including World Football Stars, which will include a football alongside a special edition pack of Top Trumps cards. Since darts has had such a great resurgence recently, we’ve also produced a gift set for our Top 30 Darts Greats Top Trumps range, which will include darts alongside a pack of the cards.
Tapping into the adult party games trend, we will introduce Party Trivial Pursuit bitesize edition which is a lot of fun. Also joining our portfolio is a Stranger Things quiz aimed at fans who will be rewatching all the series leading up to the big finale in December and January; as always, we like to have our finger on the pulse and can’t wait for one more visit to the upside-down.
Any other developments happening at Winning Moves that Toy World readers should know about?
KH: Besides our new launches, we’re also focusing on gradually implementing FSC-approved, sustainable packaging across our ranges. We’ve both improved some of our games in partnership with key licensors, and also extended this to our new Goddit game, which we’re hugely proud of. It is also fully sustainable, packaged in a tin that is both long-lasting and contains no plastic at all.
Going forward, we are committed to continuously reducing plastic in all our packaging. We're already rolling that out across many of our boxed games, such as Top Trumps Match (smaller playing grid, acetate sleeves removed from the box), we’ve even replaced a cellophane-wrapped deck of cards with a single cardboard banding in some Top Trumps packs. We have many initiatives in the pipeline, as we continue to eliminate plastic from our products.
What do you see as the big opportunities in the games category right now?
KM: At Toy Fair this year and last year, everyone was looking for innovation. We’ve listened to that, and we continue to develop new games at accessible price points such as Goddit!.
The Games & Puzzles category is doing well right now, particularly tabletop games, and we continue to look into digital gaming. This is an area we are eager to explore further as a way of effectively engaging consumers with our brand and games they already know and love. We’ve seen the success of traditional board games in this space and believe there’s still a huge opportunity for further development in the category.
We’re also working on providing even more accessible price points (sub £15) for consumers and smaller box options; this is something that’s proving very popular in the market right now with ‘play n go’ games that are travel-friendly and quick to pick up. It has the added benefit of helping with retailer shelf space too.
You’ve collaborated with some major licences, including Hello Kitty, Stranger Things and Sonic the Hedgehog. How do you decide which licences to collaborate with?
KM: Primarily, our source of inspiration has always been the Las Vegas Licensing Expo and Brand Licensing Europe in the UK. Our business development team, licensing team and CEO have always attended the shows. They talk to licensors and entertainment creators to get a feel for what they think is coming through; they’ll then feed that back to the wider Winning Moves teams. From there, we have an open dialogue with our retail partners to see what they’re backing and that help us make our decisions.
We’re all engaged in the licences that come through each year, and the gut feel across the team for newness is well-tuned with experience. We challenge each other and have a friendly-competitive nature when putting forward our big bets each year. It’s important to make sure we have the right licences on the right products; for example, something that works on Monopoly might not work well across other Top Trumps, so we keep that in mind too. This is all part of the fun in curating a compelling range for our retail partners and games fans.
How will you be supporting your brands and retailers in the run-up to Christmas?
KH: We’re excited about our forthcoming advertising campaigns with London Underground and Amazon Prime Video, set to run in the November and December period. We’ve got a giant screen in Westfield Stratford featuring the new Goddit! range, engaging online videos, influencer gifting and ads running on social media too.
KM: A big part of our marketing activity this year will also consist of radio and viral campaigns for both our World Football Top 200 range and the Goddit! range. We’ll continue working with trade magazines like Toy World, to reach retail buyers directly.
KM: Recognising that it’s a tough market out there, if we can come up with ways to help independent retailers, we absolutely will. We’re supporting AIS on their Christmas Powerbuy initiative, which will help to drive footfall during the Christmas selling period, and we’re working with Toymaster on an exciting promotional initiative for Spring 2026.
What can be expected from Winning Moves in 2026?
KM: Our Top 200 World Football Stars range will be revamped for the upcoming World Cup. Many of our football-based products have been redesigned to have a green, red and blue colour scheme, representing America, Canada and Mexico, which ties in perfectly with the World Cup.
We’re pinning a lot on football next year, as it's usually among the best-sellers across Monopoly, Guess Who?, Top Trumps, Whot, Waddingtons playing cards and other titles. We placed over 500 World Football Stars cardboard shipper display units at retail last year, and the target for this year is to increase this to upwards of 1,000. We’re currently having those ongoing conversations, but we want those in place for the World Cup and beyond.
2026 will be the year of Disney, and everyone is getting ready for Harry Potter in 2027, so that will be a focus for Winning Moves in autumn/winter. Kawaii is a huge trend that we’re jumping on with our Kawaii Cuddles range across Goddit and Top Trumps. We’re making sure we stay ahead of trends and look at all the things that people are excited about; our strap line is ‘whatever you’re into, so are we'. Rest assured that if something is hot, Winning Moves will be on it.
