Founder Will Hall on the licensing deals being Puzzle Post’s advent calendars are Christmas crackers

It was great to see your team at Top Drawer, Will. Something that caught my eye is your range of advent calendars and Christmas crackers. What licences do you hold for those lines?
Right now, we hold licences for Taskmaster, House of Games, The Traitors, and The 1% Club. With Taskmaster, we have crackers and an advent calendar. For all the others, we have crackers.

Why those shows, Will?
They’re all brilliant shows that translate really naturally into games and interactive formats. Each licence brings a totally different flavour to Christmas… Taskmaster for the big, silly challenges, The Traitors for social deduction and strategy, House of Games for general knowledge quizzing, and The 1% Club for logic and reasoning.

And what can people expect from the products?
With our Christmas crackers, we thought the traditional little trinkets could be so much better. Christmas is about enjoying time with your friends and family, having a laugh, and making memories… But traditional crackers don’t really do that – so we’ve made some that do! They’re designed to bring people together and have some fun.

Each one is built around gameplay. Inside House of Games and The 1% Club, for example, you’ll find completely original quiz rounds created with the show’s producers – not reused TV content. The Taskmaster Advent Calendar works like a puzzle hunt: you have to solve each task to know which door to open next.

Yes! I really appreciated that on the stand. It’s not just a countdown…
No! And with The Traitors, the show is so fun – everyone just wants to play it as if they were on the show, so we didn’t change the format much. We simply give you everything you need to play – you don’t even need Claudia! The crackers are also a lovely way to distribute the Faithful and Traitor roles. Finally, for Taskmaster, we worked really closely with Alex Horne and the makers of the show to bring the world of Taskmaster into your home – all the tasks and jokes were written by Alex himself.

Let’s talk about that! How important is authenticity in these products?
It’s everything! It’s always obvious when something’s been made with care and when it hasn’t. Having Alex involved was brilliant because it meant the humour, tone, and challenge level were exactly right. We’re fans of these shows ourselves, and the people who’ll buy and enjoy these games are fans too – so the games have to reflect that. Also, every cracker and calendar is 100% plastic-free and recyclable. You can have plenty of fun without the plastic, so why put it in there?

Why indeed?! I’m curious to ask: What’s the creative process at Puzzle Post?
Our creative process is very collaborative – ideas come from everywhere. We’re currently a team of 11, four of whom are entirely focused on product. Bobbie and I are still involved in everything we make, but we’ve got a great team with ideas and skills we don’t have, which has helped Puzzle Post grow massively.

But to your question… We don’t have a formal process for generating new product ideas. It’s genuinely an open forum where anyone can suggest anything. We’re fortunate to work in an industry we love, making products we enjoy. It’s a small team – we all sit in the same room – so the conversation is constant.

Perfect. And I’m hearing that it would’ve been a team effort… But how did the idea of taking Puzzle Post in this direction come about?
We made some escape-room-style Christmas Crackers a few years ago. These were, essentially, a natural extension of the games we were already making… We just because thought traditional crackers could be a lot more fun. We’d sent Alex Horne one of our games when we first launched during lockdown in 2020, just because we were fans. He very kindly played it, replied to us, and we kept in touch. So when we thought there was more we could do with the Christmas cracker idea, we reached out to him again. Well, one thing led to another. Now, that range has become a core part of our business.

Fantastic! I love it. Now, we spoke about how you like inventors to pitch to you in our sister magazine, Mojo Nation… People can read that here. In terms of values and similarities, though, what do you look for in a licensing partner?
As discussed, we want to create games that feel true to the brand we’ve licensed and genuinely fun to play – that’s the main thing. We’re on the lookout for properties we genuinely enjoy and that we think would lend themselves well to the format of crackers, advent calendars, or puzzle games.

Some shows are brilliant on TV, but we can’t always see how they’d translate into a physical format, so we don’t go ahead – even if we love the brand. The best projects are those where we can collaborate directly with the creators. We like to throw ideas around and make sure the final thing really captures the spirit of the show. People buy The Traitors crackers because they love the show… Our job is to make the game feel as close to that experience as possible.

And on that: are there other licences you’d like to fold into the range?
We’ve got a few conversations underway, but we’re careful about what we take on. We’d rather do fewer, better projects that really fit our style. We’ve got lots of new versions of our current product ranges that we’re excited to release in the new year, though… First, we just need to get through the next few manic months! Ha!

Ha! I hear you! To wrap this up, tell me: what’s the one question I could’ve asked you today but didn’t?
You could’ve asked me if you would like us to put Puzzle Post on the front of all Mojo Nation sites and printed material for the next year, free of charge?

Ha! Okay… And what would’ve been the answer?
That would be great, thanks so much – let me know what you need from me!

Ha! Well, personally, I’d do that for a box of Traitors crackers – but let me run it past Adam Butler; I’ll see what he says.