Ravensburger

Ravensburger is a German publisher and games company headquartered in Ravensburg, Baden-Wurttemberg. Its history begins in 1883, when bookseller Otto Robert Maier founded Otto Maier Verlag. The firm’s first publication was intended for professional readers: a handbook for building construction. It soon broadened its output to include books, activity materials, games, and picture books for children, establishing product categories that remain central to the company. The blue triangular Ravensburger logo is one of the company’s best-known identifiers. Ravensburger uses it across jigsaw puzzles, board games, books, creative products, and digital offerings. Its puzzle business is especially prominent. The company produces puzzles for children and adults in many piece counts and image styles, from illustrations and landscapes to licensed entertainment properties. Ravensburger has also made unusually large puzzles, including “Memorable Disney Moments,” a 40,320-piece Disney-themed puzzle released in 2019. Among its enduring games is memory, a picture-matching game introduced by Ravensburger in 1959. Players turn over cards to find matching pairs, and the game has appeared in numerous themed editions. Another major Ravensburger property is Scotland Yard, a deduction game first published in 1983. In it, detectives cooperate to track the hidden criminal Mister X across a map of London using transport tickets. The original game won the Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s influential board-game award, in 1983. Ravensburger expanded beyond its original publishing operation through acquisitions and specialist labels. It acquired Swedish wooden-toy company BRIO in 2015. BRIO is known internationally for wooden railway systems and its red, pull-along BRIO Toddler Wobbler products. Ravensburger acquired ThinkFun, the US-based creator of logic games such as Rush Hour, in 2017. Its alea label, founded in 1999, publishes strategy board games and is associated with titles including The Castles of Burgundy by Stefan Feld. In 2017 Ravensburger launched GraviTrax, a modular marble-run system combining track construction with concepts such as gravity, magnetism, and kinetics. Sets use plastic components, rails, bases, and action elements, allowing users to build and alter routes for metal balls. The product line has subsequently received expansion sets and themed editions. The company also operates Ravensburger Verlag, which publishes children’s and family books. Its portfolio has included the “tiptoi” interactive learning system, in which an electronic pen reads coded areas on specially produced books, games, and globes to trigger sounds, speech, and information. Ravensburger thus remains closely tied to the educational and family-oriented publishing and play markets developed from Otto Robert Maier’s nineteenth-century enterprise.