Cool Hunting

Combining Trivial Pursuit, charades, art and some varieties of calisthenics, Cranium is one of my all-time favorite board games. Cool Hunting has the exclusive on the new edition, Cranium Wow and we are giving one away before it hits stores. Details after the jump.

While staying true to the original Cranium game, Wow features an entirely revamped design with all new questions including everything from "The Hoff" to the White Stripes. The new playing pieces were inspired by the designer toy culture (pictured below). Each game comes with an assortment of four vinyl movers but collectors can get all 12 by purchasing them separately from Cranium.

After launching in 1998, the original game Cranium quickly became the fastest-selling independent board game in history. To learn more about it's success and the new Wow edition we asked Cranium's Creative Director, Michael Connell a few questions.

What is your opinion on the video gaming culture these days?
I think it's a representation of male youth culture. I'm looking forward to how it's going to evolve into touching a broader audience like young women and groups of adults. I like that you can play with people everywhere and I really appreciate the animation and technology being used in that area of gaming. I hope that there will be more emphasis on non-violent games in the future.

What are some of your favorite games other than Cranium?
Snowboarding is hands-down my favorite thing to do. I also enjoy surfing even though I'm not very good! I have three daughters, so I play a lot of see-see-o playmate, double dutch and hide and seek.

How did you get into the field of designing board games?
I'm actually not really in that field. At Cranium, we approach our packaging from a broad focus on design. I'm in the field of pop culture, design, music and fashion. I started my career as a fashion art director in Milan. In developing Cranium Wow, I was able to fuse my expertise and passions to help create what we're proud to call the first-ever designer board game. The style of Cranium Wow is really in a league of its own. There's nothing else like it out there in the board game category, and we think people are going to recognize and appreciate that.

Continue reading...here.

What was your inspiration and motivation for Cranium Wow?
Wow came from a pure design point of view. The look and feel was inspired by vinyl culture and art toys, and how they relate to Cranium and its origins with artist Gary Baseman. I was also inspired by typography. Overall, my goal in creating the Cranium Wow packaging was to explore how these elements along with art, design and personality can influence the game market. As for the activities and trivia, we crafted 100% new provocative content that touches on what's important to people today, and what's topical in our current culture and society.

Any new developments you want to let us in on? Any new games you're working on now or in the near future?
Following Cranium Wow, design will continue to be a major influence in developing future Cranium games.

The game won't be out till late September or early October and will be sold at the Cranium site, Starbucks and other retailers nationwide—however, you can pre-order the game now at Target for $30. A Cool Hunting reader could potentially be one of the first ever to own the game by following the contact link at the bottom of the page, selecting "Cranium Wow Giveaway" from the pull-down menu and telling us what country fortune cookies were invented in before Friday, 14 September 2007, 11:59pm EST. We'll chose a winner at random from the correct entries.