University Games President Bob Moog wins I.D.I.O.T. Award at UK Toy Inventors’ Dinner 2026

University Games President Bob Moog was awarded the prestigious I.D.I.O.T. Award at this year’s UK Toy Inventors’ Dinner, hosted at 116 Pall Mall. I.D.I.O.T. stands for International Designer and Inventor of Toys, and the award – initiated in 1988 – is given as a tribute to those who make an outstanding contribution to the toy industry.

Previous winners in recent years include the team at Fuse, Carterbench’s Suzanne Robinson and Hasbro’s Tanya Thompson. This year’s award was presented to Bob by Mike Moody of Seven Towns. Here’s what each of them said to standing ovations on the night:

Mike Moody
Good evening inventors, honoured guests and our dedicated committee who’ve worked so hard to make all this happen – and what a wonderful night it’s been so far. I’m truly honoured tonight to be asked – once again – to present this year’s I.D.I.O.T. Award. That’s not once again this year, but once again in the time I’ve been a member of this wonderful club…

The I.D.I.O.T. Award celebrates extraordinary contributions made by inventors of our toy and game industry, and equally, the contributions of those within the toy companies who work so hard promoting our ideas and support our invention community. Our recipient this evening has been an entrepreneurial pioneer. Over the years, he’s produced a remarkable range of successful games and built a company with a stellar reputation.

And importantly, he’s supported us – the inventors and our ideas – by being a familiar face at our dinner for very many years. In fact, too many years! He’s one of our longest standing overseas members. He’s taken risks on our concepts, created many of his own, enjoyed his share of winners and losers like most of us, and yet has always remained enthusiastic for the next new idea.

Before launching his own company back in 1985, I’m told he considered three very different ventures. By now, he’ll be beginning to know who he is! They were a microbrewery, a novelty ice cream business or a games company. Well, booze apparently turned out to require too much investment and the thought of warehouses full of ice cream, especially where he comes from, was an absolute nightmare!

So! A games company it was… His first published game was a murder mystery party. As he recalled, reactions from mass market toy buyers went something like this… “Let me get this straight,” said the buyer. “You’re pitching me a game that can only be played once, has no board, needs eight players, and you want me to stock it in a store full of children while the word ‘murder’ is written on the box?”

Well, I’ll tell you: during my time as a buyer, the answer would’ve been, “Sorry, that’s not for us.” However, there were some brave people around and they tended to be in the department store specialty in catalogues, and they embraced it…

His company became a trendsetter, opened new retail channels for games – from bookstores to electronic shops to DIY stores which, by the way, we’re all still benefiting from because where do we go for new distribution in this wonderful world of the toy market today?

He’s long been an ally of the inventor community. One of the first games he licensed externally was a game called Dynamite. As he fondly puts, it was created by a young boy whose parents were really pushy.That experience inspired him to create the National Young Game Inventors Contest, which he ran for 15 years. Each year, the company published the winning game and awarded the young Inventor a $10,000 scholarship, which in those days was a lot of money.

Since those early days, the company has moved forward at pace and he has led through many beloved launches. These include 20 Questions, Stupid Deaths, Smart Ass, Irritable Vowels, Rubik’s Race – which is dear to me, by the way – and many, many more. What’s more, he has also launched subsidiaries in the UK and Australia, acquired businesses including Paul Laymond, The Lagoon Group, the Learning Journey and – most recently – the Forbidden Games Company…

More than 40 years after its founding, University Games remains a major force in today’s toy and game landscape, as does this year’s I.D.I.O.T. Award winner. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in celebrating the one and only: Bob Moog.

Bob Moog: Am I allowed to give a short talk? Wait, I want be able to see everybody and I can’t see them unless I get up here… [Bob stands on a chair] Now I can see everybody! That’s great. Okay… Well, I have sat in the audience here for over – well, the first one I saw, was Roger Ford. When did he get his? In the nineties probably…

Anyway, I just told the table over there that they’re the best table because they have the most I.D.I.O.T. winners sitting at their table. So next year, if I sit at the table with the guys I was with, we’ll tie! Now, I don’t know everyone here, but I want to thank you guys…

The I.D.I.O.T. Award has a rich, rich history. And if you follow the Mojo Nation website, they did a interview with every single I.D.I.O.T. winner, or someone who knew the winner really well if they were not around. But one memorable time when someone won the I.D.I.O.T. Award was when Adi Golad won… He told the story of his company and how it got started, and many of you were probably not here that night so, if it’s okay, I’d like to tell you the story of how Goliath got started…

I’m kidding! I’m not going to say that! But let’s just say he drove around Holland in his station wagon selling Rummikub… He took 25 minutes to tell us that! Anyway, those of you don’t know me, don’t know this, and those of you who do know me might not know this, but I started out as a game inventor and the first thing that we wanted to do was murder-mystery party. And I didn’t know anything! I’d never been in the toy industry. I didn’t know anything about really running a business. And we went and tried to sell a Murder Mystery Party, and Mike described it really well: none of the companies were interested in it, and I didn’t have the persistence that a lot of you have to keep inventing and selling…

So I just said that I really wanted to take this to market: I’m going to start a company. And our company will not just do game development but will also sell product to retail… The goal was to sell the product to retail to get enough money to support me while I invented games. And it turned out to be the opposite! We ended up building a business that is now much more known for our marketing and our sales than it is for the games I invent. Probably nobody knows about any of the games I invent because most of the time they don’t sell very well! The ones that settle well are the ones that we license from all of you. So my ego keeps me in there trying. And my dream was – and many of you may have had this dream – to have a specific company license your game…

But my dream was to someday have a game that was good enough that it could have ‘MB’ on it. And in 1987, we licensed 20 Questions to Milton Bradley. Then I had a new goal! I wanted a game that was good enough that it could have ‘Parker Brothers’ on it – and we did that a couple of years later. But the thing I learned was that if you want to run a company, you don’t have time to invent games…

So the game inventing community is so important for us to be able to keep going. And I still tinker around and invent a game here or there, but most of our successful games come from all of you, and from your colleagues around the world. So keep it up! Keep inventing, keep bringing them to University Games. And we’ll keep saying no, but occasionally we’ll respond to an email and actually say yes. And there’re some people in this room who’ve actually licensed us products and they’re very wealthy now! And I would like to share that with all of you. So yes, keep bringing us your games…

We’ve been in business now for 41 years. We started on April Fool’s Day 1985. And I’m gonna make a promise to everybody in this room who’s a game inventor. If you keep bringing them to us: we’re going to license a game from you. We’ll do the best we can to make it the best game we can. So thank you all and thanks for coming!

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