Our story begins in 1999, when Winning Moves brought Top Trumps back to life, and is told by Tom Liddell, the Top Trumps Guardian.

"I remember Top Trumps"

In 1999, as Managing Director of a three-man team at Winning Moves, I was invited to have a look in the archives of the world's biggest games company, Hasbro.

Winning Moves at the time was a start-up games company, producing the city and regional editions of Monopoly and a few other games like Pit and Double Quick. I had joined the company at its birth in the UK and having survived our first year, we were looking to broaden our range.

As part-owners of Winning Moves, Hasbro were happy for us to explore 'hidden potential' in their back-catalogues and so the invitation was accepted. On one particular day, I sat in a room in the R&D department at the European headquarters outside London, flicking through the pages of old Hasbro, MB and Waddington's trade brochures.

Subbutteo had already been mentioned as an opportunity, and as I paged through I saw other familiar games like Whot and Lexicon. But what intrigued me most was when I turned over a page to reveal one of my childhood favourites. "I remember Top Trumps" I murmured fondly.

Today's Top Trumps

In 2005, we hope to sell our ten millionth pack of Top Trumps in the new-look case. You'll notice we've been busy and expanded the Top Trumps range into Juniors, Specials and Limited Editions. Soon you'll be able to play on your phone, TV and even in the pub!

In the last 5 years, Top Trumps has made friends with everyone from Spidey to Shrek, from Lord Sauron to Bart Simpson and from the Bratz girls to the sharks of the world's oceans..Top Trumps has even made friends with space! This year we're going to make friends with some really magical folks, so keep coming back to find out more!

The Team

Over the past five years the Top Trumps team has evolved and been built up to help keep delivering great packs on both fact and fiction subjects. I work closely with my colleague Mark for licensing new titles and with Nik on developing all titles. Then there's Carl and Paula who help market the packs and sort out the major promotions and look after the web site. Between us we decide on every colour, statistic, font, word and, of course, title. If you want to write to us, please click here for the letters page. We'd love to know your thoughts.

Global

As the Top Trumps Guardian, my job is to try and help the game reach evermore families. We now sell Top Trumps in a number of countries around the world. You can see where packs are available on the map in our 'Global' section. If you have any pen-friends or relatives overseas, you can send us their address and we'll try and send them a pack, absolutely free!

The Future

Whatever you're into, I hope Top Trumps has made a friend of you. We'll keep trying to bring out the coolest and most intriguing titles for years to come, so if you've any suggestions or questions, please drop me a line through our letters page and we'll see what we can do.

In the meantime, happy trumping from your fellow Top Trumper!

Tom Liddell
Top Trumps Guardian