2003 Million Minute Family Challenge

Patch Products kicked off the third annual Million Minute Family Challenge at the Chicago International Toy and Game Fair over Labor Day weekend. At that event, more than 100 families played games and logged a total of 1,350 minutes to start the 2003 challenge.

Now everyone is invited to log their game-play minutes -- any board game or card game counts -- at the official Million Minute Challenge web site.

The Challenge is a grassroots effort encouraging interaction and communication among family and friends by playing board games. The goal is to encourage at least 1,000 families, friends or organizations in each of the 50 states to play a board game together for 20 minutes. That's 1,000,000 minutes of quality time with family and friends.

Game-play minutes can be logged through December 31, 2003.

As of this writing, my home state of Pennsylvania has a narrow lead over Illinois in terms of total minutes played, 1467 to 1392. And, I'm proud to report, a four-hour (240-minute) game session I took part in over the weekend is what put us in the lead.

The Million Minute Family Challenge web site includes ideas on how to participate, games to play and educational information including the benefits of family time and the history of games.

Patch Products' games include TriBond, Blurt!, Mad Gab, and Malarky. In addition, Patch has licensed games for high profile brands such as McDonald's, *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees.