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The Toy Man® News & Views
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Product Reviews / Evaluation Report Summaries (ERS) |
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Induction Certificate Number:
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74020111021-533
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Induction Date:
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October 21, 2011
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Certificate License
Status: | Active |
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Outside The Box
by:
Rev. James G.W. Fisher - Editor / Product Evaluation Expert
Evaluation Report Summary (ERS) Date:
10/21/2011
Outside The Box gives every single player a chance to be a hero by helping his or her team win. There are no dice. Teams can only advance by getting the answers right. Best of all, the box cover becomes the game board!
[ Please refer to A-2-Z Company Index for contact information.]
Participating in our eco-Recognition™ Project to encourage greenBusiness™
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Product Type
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Release Year
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Primary Usage
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Target Age / Max. Weight
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Target Gender
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Board Games - Intellectual Development |
2011 |
Consumer |
12 years + |
Female/Male
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Evaluation Report Summary (ERS) - Index
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Evaluation Report Summary (ERS) Category Rating Scores |
Category rating scores are based on scale from 1 to 5. Rating score must be 3 or higher to pass in each evaluation category.
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Creative Agenda |
Ease of Use |
funQuotient™ |
Marketability |
Skill Development |
Overall Visual Appeal |
5 |
5 |
5 |
4.5 |
5 |
4.5 |
Final product / service rating is averaged from the sum total of ALL applicable evaluation category scores. Only scores of "3" or higher are published.
There are a total of 357 evaluation categories which are used in our evaluation process.
(NOTE: Not all categories are applicable to any one product or online service.)
Only 6 of the evaluation category rating scores for this New Inductee's evaluation are featured for public view.
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Critical Evaluation Information These icons represent important attributes with which this product / service
is associated, contributes to, or encourages development of.
Select any of the unique icons below to learn more about the specific attribute it represents. |
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Trade Industry Sales Types
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Industry Memberships
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Safety / Quality Classifications
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CE Marked | UL Approved | JPMA Certified |  | (Not Applicable) | (Not Applicable) | | ASTM Compliant | eco-Friendly | eco-Conscious | (Not Applicable) |  |  |
UPC Code / ISBN# | Manufacturer SKU | Age Grading | | | Labeled/Appropriate |
Manufactured In | Safety Hazard/Warnings | U.S.A. | Small playing pieces present a potential choking hazard for ages 11 and under. |
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About Our New Inductee
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Before you buy a product, it's generally common practice to be familiar with what it does, the branding, and other details. We feel that the same rule applies to our "New Inductees" we announce each week, so this section is titled "About Our New Inductee." The information in this section will provide you with a quick yet accurate glance of what the product or service is all about. |
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Ready for A Riddle?
"What do you get when you combine one Outside The Box game, a university library, a few students, and a strict librarian?"
Answer:
"Lots of fun, noise, and a very annoyed librarian! " |
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Outside The Box made its way into the CSUN campus library via some CSUN students and The Toy Man®. A short time later the librarian was demanding the students to take the game elsewhere due to excessive noise! They were having too much fun learning! |
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Additional Details & Perspectives
Independent Evaluator Reports
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In this section we have called upon the assistance of top industry professionals to evaluate the product in this evaluation summary.
These scholars form their own opinions from extensive analysis and produce detailed, in-depth reports connected with their own personal study and evaluation of the products submitted for independent evaluation.
The information to follow is comprised of excerpts from the independent evaluator reports that have been paraphrased, posted verbatim, or a combination of both, in order to encapsulate an accurate presentation of the primary details conveyed in each report. This approach provides a completely independent perspective in the evaluation of each product. |
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PRODUCT DETAILS |
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OUTSIDE THE BOX |
TARGET AGE GROUP: |
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12 Years + |
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: |
4 + |
LEARNING CURVE: |
Variable (Progressive learning format) |
GAME PLAY TIME: |
56 minutes to 1.26 hrs average |
CONTRIBUTION: |
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Progressive Skill Development |
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Overall Rating Average: |
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 |  |  |  | This Week's Independent Evaluators | |  |  |  |  |
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Therapeutic
Recreation Specialist PhD., Ed.D.,
FACFE,
Director of Scientific Recreational
Therapy Studies
"Outside The Box is a tabletop board game which pushes the team players into developing
creative strategies to improve and win with each game. The creative agenda of the game demonstrates recognition of the significance of experience, active thought processing, and executive cognitive functioning in learning and recreational entertainment. The primary game components are simplified to a basic level yet the game requires more centralized and focused attention to develop winning strategies through team interaction."
"With each game played with Outside The Box, a clear cut pattern of study and retention of each and every facet of the game is established. This is the kind of game that is not only entertaining, but rekindles the desire for the challenge in recurrent play of the game with constantly evolving competitive team strategy development."
"The team play encourages each player of a team to draw upon and contribute for mutual benefit in the end result. Acquisition of substantial interactive skill development from playing the game recurrently is inevitable. This in turn enables a player to improve in their psycho-social experience in their lives in general outside of playing the game." |
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* PLEASE NOTE: At the request of our independent evaluators their names are not disclosed to protect their personal and professional privacy. Their labors are provided at no charge to assist us in providing a well-balanced and accurate product or service evaluation summary. All opinions and or statements from the independent evaluator(s) featured here do not represent the opinion of The Toy Man® Product Guide, any member, division of, or Epiphany Communications itself.
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Consumer Hands-On Evaluation
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Nothing is more powerful than hands-on experience by a consumer with a product when it is under evaluation. Based upon that fact we put a number of products we currently are slated to evaluate at the mercy of consumers in a hands-on evaluation where anything goes. The information to follow will explore the responses from the participants in our spontaneous hands-on consumer evaluation of the products available for their review. |
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Outside The Box was available for consumers at the Anaheim
Hilton™ and Disneyland™ along
with a variety of other products for consumer hands-on evaluation.
To spice the experience up, The Toy Man® and his staff gave away
over 1,000 non-Disney products at Disneyland including one copy of Outside The Box.
The excitement for our consumer hands-on evaluation participants
seemed endless as we all had the enjoyable experience of watching
guests of the Anaheim Hilton™ and Disneyland™ resort parks playing Outside The Box. |
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A Sampling Of Our Evaluation
Category Ratings
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The rating of a product is useless if you do not fully understand and comprehend how the ratings is reached or what the value of the rating represents. This need for clarity encouraged us to have this section titled "A Sampling Of Our Evaluation Category Ratings." To assist you in gaining a greater understanding of the evaluation category ratings we use, a small sampling of the individual category titles & rating
scores from the complete product review itself for
this product or service are featured here.
The categories which have been selected to be
featured in this evaluation report summary for public view, specify some of
the primary points of how and why each specific rating score was reached. |
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The Featured Category Ratings Sampling For This Evaluation Summary Are Listed Below: |
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CREATIVE AGENDA: Rating Level - [5] 
Outside The Box proved its worth in our evaluation
of CREATIVE AGENDA. The creative agenda of the game delivers
a guarantee of a strong narrative progression and prompt response
level with its progressive learning structure. As one of our evaluators stated so perfectly, it delivers a strong influence
in cognitive development and creative strategy thinking. The players have
to think and respond quickly as a team and get creative with every single game. No room for lazy brains here.
The CREATIVE AGENDA of Outside The Box provides a challenge that influences recurrent game play. Players almost always developed a desire to play at least two or more games in
our testing. Outside The Box pulled a perfect score of [5] Stars
in this evaluation category for CREATIVE AGENDA. |
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funQUOTIENT™:
Rating Level - [5] 
funQuotient™ is an evaluation category
where Outside The Box wasn't lacking. It is a perfect fit for both home and educational use in creating plenty of funQuotient™
in the experience. As one of the teachers at a local high school stated, "Who would have imagined a game like this could get these students to have fun learning without hesitation?"
Outside The Box has all of the right elements to create the strongest
level of funQuotient™.
The literally endless number of narratives which could be developed
within each round to win this game, serve as a catalyst to create plenty of competitive
challenge. Outside The Box managed to pull a perfect score
of [5] Stars in this evaluation category for funQuotient™. |
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LEARNING CURVE: Rating
Level - [5] 
Learning curve? What learning curve? With Outside The Box the LEARNING CURVE was a challenge to establish an accurate rating. It is important to realize that players have a choice to read up on every facet of the game with the materials provided in the box and on the CD, or they can just jump in and learn progressively as they play each round. The latter option was generally the one most often chosen by all testing groups in our evalaution.
Having a game designed with
such an unusual option to learn as you go practically eliminates the idea of a learning curve altogether. This learning curve approach adds greater value to the game. It creates a stronger
inspiration for players to strive even harder to draw on and develp their cognitive
skills to win the game. As always, this also enables Outside The Box to keep from
becoming boring and redundant. Outside The Box came through in this evaluation category with a perfect score of [5] Stars in this category for LEARNING CURVE. |
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MARKETABILITY: Rating
Level - [4.5] 
Outside The Box clearly was quite challenging in our evaluation of its rating in regard to MARKETABILITY. There were many variable attributes and elements that had to be taken into consideration such as price point and product footprint. Many of these elements may be seen one way by one evaluator and differently by another.
We first established without question that Outside The Box appeals to a vast range of age groups as well as is a hybrid product. We also reminded ourselves of the fact that our evaluation guidelines are simple, yes, or no. A product either does fit specific criteria or it doesn't. Taking that into account and looking at the game from a clinical standpoint, (just the facts), we were quickly able to streamline this portion of our evaluation and establish more well founded determination in each evaluation rating.
It was clearly established in our evaluation that once a consumer gets their first experience with Outside The Box ,
they most likely will not only play the game again but will share the delight
of their experience with others again and again. This contributes substantially in a positive favor in the marketability rating.
Although Outside The Box pulled through the rest of the
evaluation categories so well, there were a few considerations that caused a few dings. Visual appeal, durability, product foot print, price point, and a few other
details had some minor impact in the final rating score in this evaluation category. The end result is that Outside The Box came through
in this evaluation category falling short of a perfect score by
a half a point. The final rating score for Outside The Box was
[4.5] Stars in this category for MARKETABILITY. |
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SKILL IMPROVEMENT:
Rating Level - [5] 
Outside The Box possesses all of the right elements
to create a progressive rate of skill development and improvement
for players of all ages 12 years of age and up. One of our independent evaluators expressed it so well in his own words quoted below.
"Although the large number of playing cards may seem daunting at first impression, they are an elemental building block responsible for a player's skill improvement. The game is instrumental in initiating ever-changing strategy development and use of higher level cognitive skills for each of the players. With repetitive play of the game, the diversity of so much content from the cards fulfills the brain's constant demand for new stimulation"
It is more than obvious to
see that Outside The Box makes
a substantial contribution to skill development in this evaluation
category. Outside The Box rocks
the house yet again with a
final score of [5] Stars in this category for SKILL IMROVEMENT. |
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VISUAL APPEAL: Rating
Level - [4.5] 
VISUAL APPEAL posed a very strong challenge for us in our evaluation. With Outside The Box, the developers appear to have put their focus more into the game structure and eco-friendly design. This resulted in a small loss of overall visual appeal. At the same time, considering the game was manufactured in the USA and is a first run, it still maintained a level of visual appeal sufficient to be rated well above average. The color scheme of some of the cards is stimulating to the eyes and draws your attention while others are more neutral and lacking in engaging your attention.
The main element that caused an almost perfect score in this evaluation category was the text of the Master List book. According to some of our feedback forms from consumer hands-on evaluation, the text is too small for some to read. The challenge for the developers though is that if a larger typse style is used, the printing expense increases along with the bulk of the book.
Outside The Box is simple, no spectacular splash of
imagery yet the simple and bright colors with very visible text on the Phase cards draws the attention
of everyone so well. This caused Outside The Box to docked a 1/2 a point in this evaluation category. Outside The Box came
in with a powerful score rating of [4.5] Stars in this category for VISUAL APPEAL. |
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Since 1971, "The Toy Man®
Seal of Approval" has served as an emblem and standard for professional recognition
of a product or online service having met the globally recognized evaluation standards of
The Toy Man® Product Guide.
This emblem was first established in 1971 by the International Parenting Institute™. It is modeled
after the "Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval®",
an emblem of recognition for products which meet the globally recognized high standards set forth by
the Good Housekeeping Institute®.
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THE TOY MAN®
ECO-RECOGNITION SEAL
"An emblem of the highest recognition...
for support of ecological concerns applied in full measure." |
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The Toy Man® eco-Recognition Seal™ embodies the highest recognition for products and services which provide a significant contribution to ecological concerns by one or more of the following; |
- earthFriendly™ / Recycled / Recyclable materials are being used primarily or entirely in the manufacturing of the product.
- Product is or will soon be available exclusively or primarily online.
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THE TOY MAN®
AWARDS
"These are globally recognized awards that are received by a limited few,
yet they provide the well earned recognition well beyond the average that is truly deserved!" |
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"The Toy Man® Award of Excellence" is awarded to inductees that have an overall Evaluation Category Rating Average, ECRA™, of [5] Stars. That is the highest level of rating available on a 1-5 scale evaluation model. The ECRA™ is
based upon the overall average from all applicable
evaluation categories" |
PLEASE NOTE: There are a
total of 357 evaluation categories with a minimum of
231 being applicable to any one product or online service in our evaluation process with 6 being featured in the Evaluation Report Summary, ERS. |
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The
Toy Man
® Award serves as an emblem of recognition for products & online services that contribute substantially to positive skill growth and/or productivity.
This distinguished award is exclusive as well as unique, with the editor's signature which represents a product being selected as an  |
PLEASE NOTE: The eChoice™ Award images which were used from 1971-1984, 1984-2007 and 2007-April 2010 have been retrired. Although the versions of the eChoice™ Award have been retired, they still remain valid. |
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