AMIGO Partners with Maestro Media

U.S. publisher Maestro Media has announced a partnership with German publisher AMIGO for new North American versions of Halli Galli and Speed Cups, two highly successful designs from Haim Shafir.

AMIGO has been in business in Germany for four decades, and it ran a U.S. division for seven years, opening in 2018 and shutting down at the end of 2025. In the wake of that closure, Pandasaurus Games picked up three AMIGO titles — Bohnanza, Saboteur, and 6 nimmt! Baron Oxx — and plans to release these new English-language versions in Q4 2026.

Now Maestro Media is returning two other AMIGO titles to the North American market, with both scheduled for release in Q2 2027. Halli Galli, which has sold more than eleven million copies since debuting in 1990, will appear under the name Fruit Punch, which is what AMIGO had titled the game in 2018.

In Halli Galli, players each have a deck of cards in front of themselves and they take turns flipping one card face up into a personal discard pile. If you ever see exactly five fruit symbols of the same type on the face-up cards, race to smack the bell in the center of the table to claim all played cards; if you hit the bell by mistake, you must give everyone else a card. Run out of cards, and you're out of the game.

Speed Cups, which first appeared in 2013, is another real-time design, a genre Shafir has specialized in over the years. Each player has five plastic cups in different colors. On each turn, someone reveals a card from the deck, then everyone races to arrange their cups in the same pattern, claiming the card if they're the first to do so. Have the most cards after the 24-card deck runs out, and you win.

Here's an excerpt from the press release announcing this partnership:

"AMIGO has spent decades making games that families around the world know and love, and partnering with them is a milestone for Maestro Media," said Javon Frazier, CEO of Maestro Media. "We've built our business on connecting great games with the players who will love them. This partnership lets us do that with some of the most proven titles in the industry, and Fruit Punch and Speed Cups are the perfect place to start. These are games that get everyone at the table laughing and competing within seconds."

"North America is an important market for AMIGO, and we wanted a partner who knows how to reach players there and shares our belief in simple ideas that create unforgettable moments," said Cristiano Scibetta, CEO at AMIGO and responsible for the sales division — both domestic and international. "Maestro Media has shown it can take a beloved European game and make it feel at home with North American families. We're excited to begin with Fruit Punch and Speed Cups, and we look forward to what we can build together."

If you're curious to see something else from AMIGO in North America, Maestro Media might have you covered for the end of the press notes that "Fruit Punch and Speed Cups are the first titles under the partnership, with both companies already exploring further opportunities to bring more of AMIGO's catalog to North American players."