Licensed brands in safe hands: Fanroll’s CEO, Neal Hoffman, on Dungeons & Dragons, CATAN and more

Neal Hoffman, you’re the CEO of Fanroll… You work in and around games with a number of officially licensed Role-Playing Game products… With which IP do you work?
We work with Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Walking Dead. We have our own Connect 4, Scrabble and Battleship products coming out later this year. We also have Monopoly Dice, Clue Dice, Risk Dice and our core CATAN line. We actually launched some CATAN products first, which is how we won people over in terms of showing the kind of quality and service we can provide.

Well, that’s one of the things that caught my eye at New York Toy Fair: your extraordinary line of licensed CATAN products… How did they come about?
I ended up meeting Guido Teuber, CEO of CATAN, who’s one of the sons of CATAN’s inventor, Klaus Teuber. Guido and I had a great conversation about a number of things… It turns out he’d had some bad experiences with Kickstarter in the past, with people who said they were going to launch stuff but then couldn’t do it. So when I proposed we do some CATAN products, I promised him that I’d make one of everything and show them to him before we did the actual Kickstarter.

Wow! That’s a significant commitment!
And a huge investment! I also said – as someone who has my own brand, one that I’m going to leave to my kids – that I will treat his family’s brand the way I treat my family’s brand. In other words, when you’re working with me, you’re not working with a faceless corporation… You’ll be working with a person who takes responsibility. And now, I’m thrilled to say the two of us have developed a really nice friendship. We really like working together and are both pleased with the CATAN Masterpiece series. The only thing I wish I’d done a little differently is rein in some scope creep – because I get excited.

I want to hear more about your own brand shortly; for now, you said “Scope creep…”?!
Ha! Yes, by scope creep, I mean that we agreed that we’d do a certain size Kickstarter. But then somebody said, “What about making it for five to six players? You don’t have an expansion set yet…” And I thought that was a great idea. So in the middle of the Kickstarter, I added a lot of SKUs! Then I got thinking about something Guido said to me: that we couldn’t touch anything with language on it because it gets translated – and that complicates things for their other partners.

So I knew that I couldn’t do anything with the words and, technically speaking, the cards. But I really wanted to do a nice version of the CATAN cards, so I came up with the idea of doing metal cards without any words on them… This was about halfway through the Kickstarter! I was so in love with the idea that we added it in as an unlock. It did great, but by the time we were done, there were 70 different SKUs in the Kickstarter.

And obviously, CATAN just turned 30 so now is an especially good time for this. What do you think it is about that brand that makes it exceptional, Neal?
I’ve thought a lot about this. I think – for many tabletop players – CATAN was the gateway to hobby. When I talk to people, most of them top off at Monopoly, or they’re going after these $100 really hardcore games in their local store… But if they didn’t get into tabletop through those $100 games, they went through the path of CATAN. On top of that, it’s an innovative game… And people just love it! They have great memories of it; it holds a special place in their hearts because it opened their eyes to what board games can be.

Great answer. How did you come to be doing this, Neal? What’s your background?
I started off at Procter and Gamble – and I hated it! I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to spend my life doing because I’m just like a big kid… All I wanted to do was make toys and make people happy. But back then, Hasbro would only hire you if you had a master’s degrees. So – with the sole aim of wanting to make toys for Hasbro – I went back into education and got a master’s degree…

That’s amazing! When was this, roughly?
I got a job with them in 2005. I stayed there six years, working on GI Joe and Transformers vehicles. Then, my wife – whom I met at Procter and Gamble – got promoted back to Cincinnati, so I had to leave Hasbro. I was devastated because that really was my dream job… But I left the job – and I still have the wife, which is good! After that, I started doing some jobs that were outside toys. I didn’t love them!

Now, just for background, I should say that my wife is Catholic, and I’m Jewish. So one day – about 14 or 15 years ago – my son was with me in a store… He ran up to me with an Elf on the Shelf and said, “Daddy, can I have an Elf on the Shelf?” And I was like, “No, man… You’re Jewish! You can have a mensch on a bench…”

A mensch on a bench! Ha!
So I then created – ha! – the brand: Mensch on a Bench. I went on Shark Tank with that, which is what you guys called Dragon’s Den… And I got a deal! We’ve since gone on to be the most publicised brand ever to come out of Shark Tank. People love talking about Mensch on a Bench! We play into the holidays, obviously, and that gives us another bite of the apple every year. I’ve expanded it by introducing one new character a year; there are now ten in the line. We’ve probably sold over $5,000,000 worth of toys there.

And when were you on Shark Tank?
That’s about ten years ago; 2014. I now run it from my house… It’s just me. I have no employees; I do it for fun. But at some point, I realised I’m only putting out one item a year. I’m not working very hard – and I’m young enough that I have it in me to step up and do it again. Around that time, I had the opportunity to buy a company called Metallic Dice Games. They focused on tabletop products, mostly in Dungeons & Dragons, and had seen an opportunity to make metal dice…

Which – to be clear – was unusual?
Right. Everyone else was doing resin and other materials. They were the first to market with metal. They expanded into metal dice trays and towers, and eventually other materials. They really became known for high-quality products and great customer service. The business had grown to a couple of million dollars, and the owner had taken it about as far as he could…

So that was really a perfect situation for me to come into. With my background of storytelling and brand building, and my connections with Hasbro and Shark Tank, I knew I could open a few doors. So I ended up a partner and bought the company.

Who was originally behind Metallic Dice Games?
It was guy called Adam Hackett and his two cousins. Adam stayed on after I bought the business; he runs product. And actually, a lot of the family that worked for the company are still on board. Now we focus on bringing innovation to the tabletop as well as brands.

What an extraordinary way to end up running your own business! How did you transition into early licenses, Neal?
We started off with some smaller licenses – Pathfinder and Kobold Press – to prove what Fanroll could do. We also rebranded Metallic Dice Games as Fanroll, then we got Invincible and Walking Dead. After that, we got, Hasbro and Avalon Hill – who do Hero Quest – with the goal of eventually getting to Dungeons & Dragons. As it happens, we ended up – through a combination of good products and good relationships – getting Dungeons & Dragons and CATAN much earlier than I thought we would.

Good answers. And let me ask you this… In terms of giving the reader a better insight into what the CATAN Masterpiece Series, what was your basic pitch to Guido?
We started off by making really lovely inclusion dice and metal sets. You’ll find these store right now. This is a gemstone robber. It looks like metal, but it’s actually hematite; and these are really heavy metal dice… So we started off with that, then had a conversation asking: what if we took this approach of upgrading to every single element of the board? And we broke down every element and carried on asking “What if…”, “What if your ocean tiles on the were sparkly outside?”, “What if they were wood?”, “What if your tiles were gemstones?”

And some of that fell away, and some of it stayed?
Exactly. So at our top level, we do have gemstone tiles! Then, “What if the number buttons fit right inside and nested together? What if we made them hex shaped?” For the settlements and cities, we ended up going beyond different colours so that you can play with civilisations: Egyptians, Incas, the Greeks… We started with four civilisations but – and this is on me – ended up with six.

This would be your scope creep!
It would! And on that, we asked, “What if we did them not only in plastic, but also, for those that really want to collect, in metal as well?” So what you’ll find is that we chose to offer different options in terms of both colour and material. For example, we did robbers in resin, metal and gemstone – then we did cards, too.

And these components are all available individually, are they not? I can’t come to you and buy the ultimate, super-deluxe CATAN?
That’s a great question! But no… Because what Guido told me was that they have partners that make the games so we wouldn’t be able to make an entire, ready-to-go game because it would take sales away from someone else. So what we do isn’t available in one box, but we are giving people the opportunity to upgrade their current CATAN game to whatever degree they like.

Well, that’s very even minded. What’s next for you, Neal?
A lot of the stuff we’ve been planning is going to be ready this fall… We have, eight new products coming out; maybe a few more. I’m really excited about them! What we’ve got to do immediately is fulfil the Kickstarter. We’re going to moulds and doing the final packaging right now. Unlike other Kickstarters, we’re doing really high-end packaging…

From there, we’re going to bring the best three or four items to retail. There are 70 in the line, but we’ll have the most approachable available for the everyday player. After that, we’ll really be doubling down on Dungeons & Dragons. We have some really cool blind-pack concepts coming out later this year. We also have the holy grail of dice! Nobody has ever figured out how you make an individual die collectible… But we’re doing a line of oversized D20s called Fizban’s Treasury; themed to Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons… Each die is correlated to a specific dragon. So you’re not only collecting dice but also collecting dragons.

And you have Dungeons & Dragons dice currently, do you not?
Yes, some have come out this year; liquid-core Dungeons & Dragons dice. We also have our Beholder’s Orb of Possibility… It’s an automatic dice spinner; you press that button – it’s electronic – and it whips the silicone die around inside! It’s crazy bouncy! Something else currently on the market in D&D is our signature series. That takes the best artwork from the ’70s and ’80s and puts it on dice towers and dice trays.

Oh, these are amazing! The quality’s great!
Thank you – this is one area where licensing with people like the D&D team really pushes you to be better. They care so much about their brand and the details. Hats off to them!

Presumably, this is why you needed to rebrand, Neal? Because you want your range to be larger and more diverse?
Exactly right. Fanroll can cater to anything with a fandom… We still make dice, but I’ve been in the toy industry for 20 years now. I can make dice, I can make plush, I can make games… I can come up with whole new concepts and ideas.
If we imagine something ‘out there’, we have the knowledge base to make it.

Fantastic. Well, this has been terrific, Neal. You’re obviously a huge fan of these brands; your passion comes through in everything you do!
Absolutely, Deej. I’m a collector; I’m a pop-culture guy; I’m a comic-book guy! So thank you… I love putting in extra details so that – when someone sees something I’ve made – it blows their minds. I love it!

I hope you’ll keep us posted on your new releases when they’re ready. Thanks for joining us.