I have run into a little bit of a snag!
It has come to light that the word Caboodle is trademarked in the UK. I'm no expert in trademarks (clearly!) but so far as I can tell, there are classes and you choose to trademark a word, image or sound in one or many classes. The class games like this fall into is Class 28. What this means is there can be more than one thing called Caboodle in the market, but not in the same class. Low and behold, there is already a Caboodle in Class 28. It is for some kind of electronic quiz product which you connect to your TV.
So as to avoid any potential issues in the future I have decided to change the name. Caboodle will now be known as BLOXO.
Bloxo was on the original shortlist and narrowly missed out to Caboodle. So maybe it was always meant to be Bloxo! It's a bit of a shame as there has been a lot of work into building up Caboodle. However, the game doesn't need to change at all. Let's face it it's much easier to do this now before we have printed copies with the wrong name on it!
For those who had pre-ordered, nothing changes. We are still planning to place the order this side of Christmas for a Spring 2024 delivery.
For those who play on BGA, we will work through how to change that. Most likely we will launch Bloxo as a new game and remove Caboodle. Of course everything will be the same, but it will mostly likely mean than scores are wiped and games in progress will be cancelled. I will update as I know more.
It turns out finding a name which isn't already the name of a game (try searching for a random word on Board Game Geek and there's probably a game listed with that name!), isn't trademarked and isn't listed on Urban Dictionary as something completely inappropriate is a bit of a minefield!
So, that's that really. It's goodbye, Caboodle and hello, Bloxo. Onwards and upwards!