The Indicator from Planet Money - Does Planet Money’s game pass the shelf test? We go undercover to find out

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

We go undercover at a big box store for an inside look at the secret shelf tes the makers of Exploding Kittens use for their hit games.Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen — Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answersConnect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. Picture four people huddled suspiciously in front of a big box retail store in Los Angeles. Feels like we're about to do something bad. It does. It feels like clandestine somehow. That first voice might sound a little familiar. That was... That was me! Surprise! Planet Money's County Malone.

Hello. I'm so excited to be here, Whalen. I am so excited you're here. Yeah, so with me that day, on that dubious day, Ilan Lee, who is the co-founder of the game company Exploding Kittens, and Alon and I were about to do, I guess you'd call it the opposite of shoplifting. We were about to go into this big box store and sneak a new board game onto the shelves because Alon was giving us an inside look at the very real secret shelf testing process that exploding kittens, a very popular party game company, uses in the real world.

This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Whalen Wong. And I'm Kenny Malone. You know, the retail shelves, they are still a surprisingly big part of our lives. And today, we get unusual inside access to the art and the science of how companies design their products and test their products to catch our attention. Kenny and the Planet Money team have been working with the Exploding Kittens Game Company to make an economics-inspired board game and documenting that journey over on their show. It's true. And, you know, we were hoping, in part, that this game could be a Trojan horse to let us report from, inside the world of big box retail.

And for Alon Lee, with exploding kittens, that big box process, it starts once they have prototypes of their game. He will often sneak copies of the game into big box stores to observe, like a retail field scientist. Um, I don't know that there's so much a science to this as much as an art. Fine, fine, okay, fine. Retail field artists, whatever. We're going to try a bunch of stuff.

if we're feeling adventurous, talk to some regular customers, point at the thing and say, what do you think of that and see what we get? Okay, so the plan is to hide things on the shelf, observe. Yeah, have you not done this before, Waylon? No, that's right. And so, you know, into the store we go, headed to the game. The game section is always on either sidewalk or battle wall. So, all right, picture, Waylon, me, and Alon.

Plus, we've got two accomplices here, Erica Barris, Mattie Murdoch, and we're playing it totally cool. Just walking like normal people who are, yes, holding two very professional-looking prototypes of our game. So this is about the size of a Kleenex box. It's a beautiful purple. And the name of the game is, Sell me a Sasquatch.

Sell me a Sasquatch. There's, you know, a whole episode about naming the game. And we arrive at the board game aisle, you know, we notice Uno Scrabble, Settlers of Caton. You also will notice that, with almost no exceptions, bigger boxes or bottom or top shelf. What does that do? Makes them harder to sell, but they do that because they have more space.

So, Whalen, that is why we decided to make Sell Me a Sasquatch, a relatively small game so that it has a good chance if we get into Big Box of getting that eye-level shelf spot, which, coincidentally, is exactly where Ilan puts our prototypes. Okay, you just put it up there. Yeah. Now that our purple little Selmaeus Sasquatch prototype is there, there are three basic tests that we're going to run to sort of answer three basic questions, Waylon.

Question number one is pretty simple. It's how does it look on a shelf now that it's there with all these other games? Right. So like, does it stand out from the crowd of games? Yes, exactly, in part. But also, there are other obvious problems that we maybe just hadn't noticed yet until it was on a shelf. So, for example, we noticed that from a distance, our game's title, is like weirdly space.

Like all the words are running together. It looks like Salmia. Easy fix. The kerding gotcha. Curting was off. Or also, we notice that no one else seems to be using the specific shade of purple

we've chosen for our box. That's really interesting. Is that good or bad? Really good. Really good. Yeah, so that's test one. How does it look when placed nicely on a shelf?

The other interesting test for what it's worth is this? Elon. wax the game, knocks it over, and shoves it back into the shadows. Oh, but, you know, this makes sense because, you know, I know kids or I'm a short person, sometimes I'm reaching for something and I knock it over trying to get it. Yeah. You know, Alon says, Big Box shelves, it's a little bit like a chaotic garage sale.

And so this is test two. Let's see if our game still stands out when it inevitably gets put back in the wrong spot, shoved behind other games, pushed over by a. relatively short person. We love the short shoppers. They call it the petite shopper test. Sorry, sorry, yes. I would argue that still stands up in shadow, which is a tough position to be in.

The lighter colors on there still pop right out. You know, we talked to a retail consultant who explained that there is this three feet, three seconds rule, which is to say, once somebody is three feet away from your product in the store, you have three seconds to convince them to pick up your product. Hmm, okay. Next time I go shopping, I'm going to see if, like, I'm feeling this, you know? Well, I've been with you. You're a fast walker, so maybe we have less time with someone like Waylon Wong. I don't know. I'm just zoom in. Yeah. You know, so there's a little variability. But this does kind of bring us to our final test.

Like, what do real shoppers think? So Ilan notices there is someone kind of far away down the game aisle browsing the games. I think there's someone you can talk to. Okay, this cat, you got to go to him. I see a young man wearing a Baltimore room. Ravens jersey, even though we're in Los Angeles, respect. And then I kind of jump out from behind a shelf and interrupt him. Can I ask you a question real quick? Okay, because we have some board game experts here.

They're all hiding. Well, don't worry. They're not, okay. What's your name? Diego. So Diego, I want you to come with me. Wow, real normal interaction you're having with this. Yes, yes, we're normal people in a normal store.

This is Diego Ortiz, and Diego and I walk over to the section of the board game where we have placed our game, though we don't tell him that. I want you to look on this shelf and just tell me if any thing jumps out to you. Or just testing some things. Just looking no context? I'll give you more context later. But for now, is anything jumping out that makes you want to pick it up? I'd probably say that Exploding Kittens, the red one right there.

The red one! That's not our game. He was, in fact, pointing to the original Exploding Kittens game, the most popular game they've ever made, which is called Exploding Kittens. Okay. So this game is sold millions of copies. So you're right. They've successfully made that one. Now, here's what I'll tell you. The game we're testing is this one here.

Tell me a sad. Okay, okay, I'm not going to lie. I was looking at it. You're just saying that. No, no, no. Now, whether or not this one random person happens to notice our game during this one test, that isn't really the test here. The real test is what happens when he, you know, chooses our game forced by us and then turns our game over. Right. So it's like assuming you clear that first, turtle three feet three seconds. Now the test is what do you do? Yeah, exactly. And specifically the question is can the back of our game close the sale or does what we've written on the back confuse the heck

out of people? For instance, for instance. Sorry, I'm reading everything. I'm rerewereing everything. No, no, take your time, man. I'm choosing three secret cards. It's confusing? Collect the good creatures, dump the bad ones. How would you know which ones are good and bad? Yeah. Confusing. Yeah. Oh. Okay. Reading it. loud and thinking about it more, it makes more sense. I know, but you shouldn't have to do that much work. So, clearly, we had some adjustments to make.

Fine, that's fine. Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated game, right? It's, like, hard to explain on the back of a box, especially a small box, as we have noted. That's right. And to be fair, Ilan says we don't have to put all the rules on the back. The goal here is just to, you explain enough to give people the sense of what it'll feel like to play the game.

And, you know, you also don't want to confuse them. But I should note that Elan says these three shelf tests, They're not going to tell you if you're destined for success. Like, best case scenario is you're just using these to spot obviously broken things. And we had found a few. And so, you know what? It was time to grab our prototypes and get out of there quickly. Before Diego called the cops on you for harassing him.

Let's get out before you get kicked out. Let's go. Are you stealing those games? Excuse me? I don't do that. It does look bad to take your own games out of a store. It's true. Hadn't really thought that through.

You were stuffing it under your shirt and running out. Let me tell you, Whalen, that your listeners can now decide for themselves how well we did making those adjustments because we can announce that sell me a Sasquatch is now available at shop.npr.org and on the shelves of many big box retailers. It's there. And if you buy the game, it is super helpful to hold a big game night. Take photos of yourself, having fun or getting angry at each other, and tag Planet Money on social media. Yep, we are at Planet Money. Exploding Kittins is at Game of Kittins. They tell us that showing people what it's like to play the game, that matters a ton right now at this point in the process. So yeah, thanks. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Kwayze Lee. It was fact checked by Sierra Juwadas and edited by Julia Richie. Kaking Cannon is our show's editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.