From Science Kits to Strategy Games: The Story Behind Thames & Kosmos with Andy Quartin and Ted McGuire

Ted McGuire (President) and Andy Quartin (CEO) of Thames and Kosmos

What if playing games could make you smarter, more creative, and a better collaborator? In this special Toy Fair 2025 episode, I sit down with Andy Quartin and Ted McGuire from Thames & Kosmos to explore how board games do more than entertain—they teach critical thinking, teamwork, and resilience. We discuss what makes a game truly great, how the industry is evolving, and why games like John Cooper and Kory Heath’s The Gang are changing the way we think about strategy and cooperation. Whether you’re a game designer, a lifelong player, or just curious about the creative magic behind the scenes, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss. Tune in for a fascinating look at the power of play!

https://www.thamesandkosmos.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-quartin-65a79975/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/thames-&-kosmos/posts/?feedView=all

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-mcguire-5026954/

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Episode Transcript

This podcast is all about using your innate creativity and mindfulness to build a life

Andy Quartin: That’s sort of a very lofty goal for being in the game business. But ultimately we want to pick games that we like. Games that are fun but also have a wholesome feel to them. So games that are good for you.

Izolda: Welcome to your Creative Mind. I’m Aolda Trakhtenberg and this podcast is all about using your innate creativity and mindfulness to build a life you love. Whether it’s through writing, music, dance, theater, or any creative pursuit. We’ll explore how to tap into your unique potential to transform your work, relationships and daily life through inspiring conversations with world changing artists, entrepreneurs and innovators or actionable insights. In my solo episodes, you’ll learn how to focus your energy, ignite your creativity, and bring more joy and purpose to everything you do.

Andy Quartin and Ted McGuire from Thames and Cosmos discuss games

Hey there. This is Izolda Trakhtenberg for the your Creative Mind podcast, reminding you that this is a special episode. I am at Toy Fair 2025 at the Javits center and I’m talking to amazing entrepreneurs and business owners who are creative at their heart because they are making amazing games and toys for people to learn with and be entertained by. I am here with Andy Quartin and Ted McGuire from Thames and Cosmos. And you remember that I am very great friends with John Cooper, who is the designer of the Gang, which is one of my current favorite games. It’s put out by Thames and Cosmos. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about that, but I’m gonna introduce you, both. I’m going to introduce you to both Andy and Ted immediately. I’m gonna ask you why. Games, what about games makes you go, yes, this is what I want to do. And Ted, since you’re the one who started the company 25 some odd years ago, I would love to ask you that question. What made you go, okay, this, this is the thing that I’m inspired by and that I want to do.

Ted McGuire: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I’m just gonna tell it like straight, str. The real truth of the matter is we started, distributing science kits in the year 2001. we grew out of a science museum called the Fame Science Center. and we had heard about this amazing German publishing company called Cosmos in the late 90s. So we wanted to distribute their products in the US and so we started doing just science kits for know, 15 years. Cosmos, the German publishing house, also had this amazing line of games that originally we weren’t as interested in. You know, like when we first started we were very focused on stem, you know, science learning Informal science education. It wasn’t until the STEM business had developed nicely and we felt like we had solid footing in that space that we started looking to expand into other categories. To you, you want a company that has differentiation in categories. So if one year science is a little down, then you have a good game year, games might be down, you have a good year in magic, you know, so part of it was that, it’just business, good business sense. And honestly I had to develop more. I think my passion for science was already in baked because I grew up in a science museum with a mom who was a science museum director. And I know was sort of, I did mechanical engineering in college. Very science minded to begin with. The game part of me had to be a little bit more developed. You know, over the years. I mean I’ve always considered myself like maybe more of a maker than a gamer. But now as we’ve been doing more, making of games, I’ve developed my gamer Persona, figured out what games I like, which ones I don’t like. And so this is a very long answer, but no long answers and no wrong. And hopefully you edit some of this. But, the. No editing. Okay. Yeah. And you know, Cosmos has made, incredible games since the 90s, maybe even a little before that. you know, they originated Catan. They’re like the powerhouse behind Catan. I was very inspired by that. I love Catan and we wanted to bring more of their great games to the US market. And that’s what we’ve been doing. I’ll let Andy, also answer the question.

Andy Quartin: Thank you Izolda. Thank you, Ted. Yeah, so when I got to the company, the company had just, I got here in 2013 and Things and Cosmos in the US we were only in science kits at the time, but we had just merged with Kosmos out of Germany. And Cosmos had this incredible, just beautiful game line anchored by Catan, but also many other games like Guango and Legends of Endor and just all these wonderful game brands. And we knew there was a big opportunity in the United States. And you know, we love playing games and many people at our company were really, you know, excited and passionate about games. But so when we first started, the idea was, let’s start with kind of the six best games from Germany that we can bring in and adapt for the US market that we felt, you know, one challenge the mind brought people together, encouraged fair play. Our vision as a company in general is we want to live in a world. We want to help create a world and foster a world where everybody loves to learn. You know, you can learn in a lot of different ways. You can learn through science, you can learn through games, you can learn through learning how to perfect a magic trick. You can learn from doing a craft, like whatever it is, right? But gaming is just a great way to learn so many important life skills. Like I just said, like collaboration, competition, like learning how to win at something helps you learn how to win it. Other things, right? When you learn what it’s like to win and compete, you learn how to study harder in school, you learn how to become a better golfer, you learn how to, you know, whatever it might be, right, to learn how to win it. A game. You, you learn how to win and you learn how to lose and you learn how to lose with dignity and how to win with dignity and how to just be a good, kind person. And so hopefully, you know, I mean, that’s sort of a very lofty goal for being in the game business. But ultimately we want to pick games that we like, games that are fun but also sort of have a wholesome feel to them. So games that are good for you.

Izolda: I love both your answers in part. And by the way, Ted, just so you know, there are no long answers and there are no wrong answers. I actually love this because we can get a little bit more in depth and I appreciate both your answers.

Ted: What is the process if somebody pitches a game to you

Izolda: One of the things that, as I’m listening to you both, I’m kind of going, okay, so you’re seeing these games come to you. Designers might pitch something or something like that. What is the process for you all you mentioned, Andy, games we like, games we might want to play. But what is the process if somebody pitches a game to you? How do you define a game that you want to bring into your house and you want to be the ones who bring it out into the world?

Ted McGuire: We’ve been doing games, for a shorter amount of time than our parent company Cosmos in Germany. So most of the games are created or published by the team, on the German side at Cosmos. but we’ve been starting to flex our muscles in that area, publishing our own games out of the US office here from Thames and Cosmos. So we’re developing what the answer to your question is now. It’s sort of influx. What is our approach to, what is our strategy for what games we’re looking for and what we’re not looking for? It’s a little open ended right now. So we’re open to a lot of things we’re looking at a lot of different types of games and testing a lot of different things and trying to figure out what, what are the guys trying to narrow in more for the future. But a lot of it is like if a game comes to us, I think one of the first questions we ask is like, should this go to the Cosmos Games team? Because more of it’s more in their wheelhouse. This would be good for Cosmos to see and for their editors to evaluate and are they the better team to look at this? Sometimes we think, oh, this is more of a US Focus game. Like we sort of have a sense of what might work in Germany versus in the US and so for some games we’ll say, oh, let’s test this here in our office with our play testers. And you know, we’ll bring games just out. We do kind of informal play testing with our friends and family. And yeah, then we go through a series of gates of like can we market this? Can it be the right price point? Like, I don’t know, is the license deal going to work out? There’s ah, a million criteria to bringing a product to market and a lot of products don’t pass through all those gates. Eventually we get to a viable product.

Andy Quartin: Thanks Ted. I could add to that.

So yeah, I mean, I guess there’s kind of two good examples. One is The Gang, right? Can I talk about the guy know, I don’t know if you were gonna talk about it in a minute, but I’ll pull it forward. But the gang, the gang is a really good example of a game that came to us and actually went to our partners in Germany just about the same time. It was presented to both of us and it was one of those sort of light bulb moments where wow, this makes so much sense. This is like sometimes you just immediately know. And this is one where we like we hadn’t even played it yet and we said wow, this is perfect for us. partially because of the comparisons to the Crew, which we had released a year before, two years. And then also because of just how popular poker is in the US market. So for those you that don’t know, the Gang is a cooperative poker game. I think cooperative Texas hold em. And one of the most brilliant things about it that struck us immediately is like, I don’t know if you play poker, but if you do, you know that it’s mostly only fun when you’re gambling. When you’re betting, it’s the betting element. That kind of Makes it fun. And so when you sit around the table with your family and you try and play a game of Texas Hold Em, it just doesn’t have the same feel as it does. And you don’t get that same feeling you get as if you were gambling on it. And then, you know, you try and do it with jelly beans or pennies, and it’s just not quite the same thing. and this really solves that problem perfectly. You could play, you can now play poker with your friends and family in a cooperative way where instead of playing each other, you’re battling the bank. And you have the same exact feeling that you get from playing Texas hold ’em if you were in a Texas hold ’em tournament or in a cash game or whatever it might be. But now it’s a, it’s a wholesome way to play it where you’re working together. And so the gang came to us, and it was then further developed in Germany with our colleagues in Germany, the editors and the game designers there, and along with Corey and John, of course. and then we released it here in the United States. And then like, kind of on the other side of it is a game like Dice Words, which is a US developed game that we developed with an author named Tim Phillips. And, when it was presented to us by Tim, what is it? About a year and a half ago, at this point, about a year and a half ago, it’s like another thing where you just automatically knew, wow, okay, it’s a word game. it’s dice. It’s like Yahtzee meets Scrabble. Yeah, that sort of checks a lot of boxes for us. Now let’s play it. Let’s see if it’s fun. and in that specific example, you know, I give it over to Ted, to be looked at, and he sort of had the same exact feeling as I did. And then he started play testing it with a whole group of people. And everybody who play tested it said, wow, this is great. And so it wasn’t one where, like, you immediately knew, like, this is gonna be awesome. But like, you saw it and you said, there’s something here, let’s check it out and go deeper. And then, yeah, and then on the other side, like Ted mentioned, our partners in Germany will develop games and they have you a long pedigree of developing very, you know, successful strategy games out of Germany. And they do a nice job at. A nice job at presenting us with games that we know are well thought out and that the gamer, consumer is going to really enjoy. Yeah. And so it’s really a lot of different paths.

Izolda: I love, love, love that what you seem to be doing is a couple different things. You mentioned with the gang, that it’s about winning gracefully and losing gracefully, but it’s also, of course, about cooperation. But one of the things going back to sort of your origins, if you will, is this notion of having fun, learning and making learning fun. And so I want to ask you with. Because it’s not like I could talk about the gang. John and I just had an entire hour and a half long conversation about the design of the gang. Because he’s just going to be on. He’s going to be on the show. Here’s the thing, though. The gang is just one. And I’m looking around the booth here at Toy Fair, and it’s just one of many, many games. But so many of these games I’m looking at, I’m like, oh, you learned something from this game. You learned something from that game. You’d have fun doing this, but learning at the same time. So I would love to like just the kid’s telescope is phenomenal for me because it foments curiosity.

So I would like to ask you right now, what is it that you’re curious about? Could be about games, it could be about something else. But what has your curiosity right now? And Andrew, why don’t we start with you?

Andy Quartin: Thank you. That’s a great question. And it’s funny you point out to the kids telescope and astronomy set, because that actually is a partnership with another podcast. the podcast called What In the World, you know, with Guy Raz and Mindy Thomas. It. We. We partnered with a podcast to make a line of science kits. So it’s great that we’re on. It’s like a very meta moment. We’re on a podcast talking about a toy that partnered with a podcast. So what makes me curious? Oh, gosh, I’m curious about everything. I sort of live curiously and it’s probably like my curse, you know’it’s?

Izolda: Right there.

Andy Quartin: Hi, welcome to Toy Fair. You never know what’s gonna happen at Toy Fair. Anybody can pass by at any moment. We’re currently at the Jacob Java center, and if you are a curious person and you come to the Java center and walk around, you will be like a squirrel in central par. There was really no shortage of anything of things that make me curious. And, I think that’s why. I think that’s why I was sort of drawn to this company things and Cosmos to begin with because it really allows kids to unlock that curiosity. And I mean at any given day I’m curious about something else today. I’m curious about what’s gonna happen with tariffs, and how we’re gonna solve that challenge to make sure we keep products affordable for the US consumer. and I’m curious about what Ted’s going to ask. I mean, I’m curious what Ted is curious about.

Ted McGuire: Yeah, and you know, Andy answered it similarly to how I would have answered too is just sort of like there’s no end to the number of things I’m curious about. And I think that that is part of maybe entrepreneurial spirit a little bit is like you’re just always digging into something a little more. You never really take, you never think an answer is completely resolved. You’re always thinking like, what’s the next step to finding out more about whatever the answer is. And Andy and I both have that kind of thinking. It makes us good business partners. We think very differently. You in some ways. and that also makes us good business partners. what I’m curious about, like right now’m curious about why our Gecko bot, which is a wall climbing robot, climbed beautifully yesterday and what variable changed to make it climb a little less beautifully today. Like, is it the humidity in here? Did somebody drop it? Like what happened? So I’ll dig into that. I’m curious about, like is the letter distribution on the target dice in dice words, the exact perfect distribution and should we go and reevaluate that again? You know, every question that I get makes me curious and I want to dig into it more and more. And each product that we have is a, this is the beauty of our job is like it’s never the same thing. Every product we do has a new set of things that allow us to explore and it’s very meta because we are doing that, but we are also letting the kids, like we’re giving the kids that use the products the space to explore that curiosity too. So like, I mean when I get to actually play with the products, not all my job, not every day, is a day where I’m getting to like, do hands on work with the products. But when I’m able to do that, that’s when I’m really having the most fun and being the most curious. And it’s a dream come true to be able to play like a kid, explore my curiosity every day. So yeah, that’s A great question.

So I have two questions that I ask everybody who comes on the show

So I have two questions that I ask everybody who comes on the show. Very short questions. They’re silly questions, but I find they yield profound answers. I do want to say, first of all, if somebody wants to find out more about themes in Cosmos, where do they go?

Andy Quartin: Go to thamesandkosmos.com. That’s T H A M M E S A n d k o s m o s.com. or just search Google.

All right, cool. And here are the last two questions. And I’m going to ask you the first question and you the second question and we’ll switch. So what is it that gets you up in the morning? And I don’t mean an alarm.

Ted McGuire: right. now, we have a one year old, three year old. They get me up in the morning. But like. Or do you mean more like philosophically? No. Okay. Literally, you know, it’s Frankie, our daughter, one year old daughter, like babbling in her crib. Yeah, getting me up.

Andy Quartin: What gets me up in the morning. You know, I like to try and greet the world with open arms every Day because you never know what’s in front of you that day. you never know what you’re gonna experience. So I think it’s the curiosity actually going back to that question. You don’t know what’s in front of you that day and what challenges you’re going to face and what opportunity is going to come before you. And the opportunity to live something new every single day. Some new adventures, some new experience, meet, a new person to that I’m going to have a moment with that is then gonna be a memory. And cause at the end of the day, you know, what do you have at the end of you, in the later years in your life, what do you have? Like, it’s not your personal possessions, it’s the memories that you had from moments from the people you met and you experienced them with. And so I think it’s making memories is, I think, what gets me up in the morning.

So here’s the last question and I’m going to start with you, Andy. And the question is, if you had an airplane, environmentally friendly, of course, that could sky-write anything for the whole world to see, what would you say?

Andy Quartin: Be kind. 

Izolda: You’re going to know in a minute why, that is one of my favorite answers.

Ted McGuire: Yeah, that’s a better one. The first thing that popped in my head was trust science. But I like Andy’s better. But I think maybe the combination of the two is okay, so. But yeah be kind is even better.