Hi Alex! You've accompished many unusual endeavors in your life, which people can read about in your POP profile, For this interview, please share with our readers what you do in our industry?

We create board games. But with the new tariffs, we create pricey comic books that come with a free board game.

What is it about the Toy and Game Industry that you love?

I love the people in this industry and I love being able to be creative and have it go to a mass market to be enjoyed by so many people.

What do you feel has been your greatest “win” so far in life? What was your biggest failure?

This is a long answer to a short question. I feel like our (my business partner Mike Szalajko and myself) journey has been full of lots of ups and downs with some amazing wins but also with crushing setbacks. When we created our first game, What The Film?! I knew nothing about the games industry. I had written a script that Mike and I were talking about while doing volunteer hurricane cleanup. Mike said to me, “We could turn that into a boardgame.” During that trip, we fleshed out the game and upon returning home spent the next couple of months creating the game, getting a prototype and then putting it on Kickstarter.

This was February 2018 and a week into our campaign, we had funded and we were playtesting our next game. Someone at the table asked us, “What are you going to do with What The Film?! after it’s done on Kickstarter.”

Very naively, I said, “I’m going to go get it into Target, of course.”

He laughed at me and proceeded to tell me that it doesn’t work like that…and good luck. That night, I went home and started researching buyers at Target. I sent out a bunch of messages trying to track down the right person. I found someone who messaged me back and within a day or two I was talking with the correct person. Two weeks later, we flew out to Minneapolis, pitched the game and it was picked up as a Target exclusive. It really was that simple. And the crazy thing is this was in February of 2018 and we were on the shelf by July 2018. So from the first prototype to on the shelf at Target it was seven months. We got nominated for a TOTY for What The Film?! and it really was just a perfect ascent to the top.

There were a few problems, however. We didn’t have any revenue to promote our game. Also, we made the mistake of having a casepack of just four games. So as I monitored our games being in stock at Target throughout the holiday season, it was out of stock 60-70% of the time or we would go into a store and it said there were units available, but they never made it to the shelf. It was stuck in the back for whatever reason.

We were also partial chain. When we got the TOTY nomination we asked Target about doing something to promote the game and the answer was no because we weren’t full chain. But it was also a Target exclusive so we couldn’t be on Amazon where all the TOTY promotions were happening. So we kind of missed out on a solid holiday season our first year.

Subsequently, the day I arrived at New York Toy Fair (to attend the TOTY’s) we got word from Target that What The Film?! was a “Not Carry Forward” item. We were crushed. And we had created way too much stock based on Target’s projections, which ended up not happening. We switched distributors a couple of times and the cost of constantly shipping pallets to and fro kept sapping our resources. That was nearly the end of our business.

We found some success with Camping with Sasquatch and ended up selling the game to Big Discoveries. The game did well for them so they started delving deeper into the games category. We created Yeti Snowbrawl for them followed by Trash Dice. While Trash Dice was about to go into production, Big Discoveries had a change in direction and decided they weren’t going to pursue games anymore. So they were on the cusp of not producing Trash Dice at all.

But thankfully, they went ahead with the planned production since the contract was already signed. But it really was going to be the last game they were going to produce. And then there was TikTok. One of the UGC videos happened to just take off getting over a million views and sales for Trash Dice took off. While we were planning Trash Dice, it was always in the plans to create Dumpster Dice as the follow up and make it a bigger, four-player game…and combined with Trash Dice a six-player game.

Dumpster Dice launched a couple of weeks ago (end of March 2025) and the day it went live on Amazon, I reached out to about six of the TikTok creators that had had good success with their Trash Dice videos. I let them know that Dumpster Dice was available and immediately one of the creators grabbed a copy off Amazon, created a video and it almost instantly got nearly a half-million views launching Dumpster Dice to the number two dice game spot on Amazon with Trash Dice falling right behind it at the number three spot for dice games.

I feel like we’ve had some really cool wins. But we still have a ways to go to get us to the next level. But holding the #2 and #3 spot of Dice Games on Amazon is definitely a step in the right direction.

What are you working on now?

We just finished a Kickstarter of four games: Little Pig Little Pig, What’s Under Your Bed?, Dice Batter and Tortilla Takedown. All the games are done at the manufacturer and the freight forwarder is sitting on them waiting for the tariff dust to settle a bit. So we’ll fulfill the Kickstarter and then get those games into retail.

We also have another Kickstarter launching next week in conjunction with Nick Metzler. He was on a reality show that premieres April 11^th, 2025 on Hulu. It’s called Got To Get Out. He goes on the show and tells everyone that his name is Doodles and that he’s a struggling artist so as to not tip them off that he’s a very smart and strategic game designer (and subsequently game player.) The game we created with him is called Sketchy Doodles, which I think sums it up perfectly. It’s like The Chameleon and Pictionary had a baby. It’s super fun.

Do you play any musical instruments? If so, which one(s)?

I play piano. In fact, the song that played at the last TAGIE’s In Memorium is a song I wrote and recorded.

Do you think there are aliens?

I have mixed feelings about this. I kinda want to say yes. I created a TV pilot called “Extraterrestrial Encounters” where we interviewed a number of people that had or least believed to have been abducted by aliens or had some sort of interaction with aliens. One of them was a former government worker. Their stories were VERY convincing. I believe they truly believe their own stories. I just don’t know if it’s really true or not. But I’d like to think yes.

Would you rather have a ghost or a monster in your closet?

I’d love to have one of each! I love ghosts and monsters and everything else that feels right at home during Halloween.

Thank you for taking time to answer our questions thoughtfully and with a sense of play!