How Last Mouse Lost Became Pop It at Target

I was kneeling on the floor of my daughter's room last week, thumb pressed into a row of silicone bubbles, trying to decide whether the thing in my hand was a game or a fidget toy. Both, it turns out — the same object, ten years apart. The Pop It on her shelf is not a 2020 social-media invention. FoxMind put it on the market in 2013 as a two-player game called Last Mouse Lost, built a square version named Go Bong in 2014, and only in 2019 signed an agreement to sell it at Target under an exclusive brand, Pop It!. The name changed several times; the molded rubber grid underneath did not.

That trail matters in a practical way. Walk into any toy aisle and you'll see the same domed silicone grid under a dozen spellings, most of them selling the shape and leaving the game behind. Only one line of those boards runs back to the two-player game FoxMind published in 2013, and telling that line apart is the whole point of what follows.

What the 2013 Last Mouse Lost Game Played Like

FoxMind launched the circular bubble-popping game under the brand Last Mouse Lost in 2013. It was a two-player game, not a fidget, and the board was a ring of domed silicone caps set into a stiff backing — the kind that presses down with a soft click and springs back when you let go. The name is the rule: players take turns pressing bubbles, and whoever presses the last remaining one loses. The last mouse lost.

What makes it a game rather than a pad of bubbles is the way a press turns into a move. On your turn you push down a single bubble or a connected run of them, so every turn changes how many are left and whether the count lands on your opponent or on you. Two kids passing a circle back and forth are doing arithmetic they can feel in their thumbs — count back from the end, decide whether to leave one bubble or two, and watch the other player realize they've been cornered. A fidget never hands you that moment.

Why FoxMind Made a Square Version in 2014

In 2014 FoxMind created a square version called Go Bong!, with new ways to play. Changing the outline isn't cosmetic for a game built on runs of bubbles. On a circle, a run can wrap around and the geometry stays uniform, because every bubble sits in the same kind of line. A square grid breaks that uniformity: a corner cell touches two neighbours, an edge cell touches three, and an interior cell touches four, so the same press covers a different amount of board depending on where you start it.

Position becomes a resource in the square version. Corners and edges gain value because a short run there does less damage to your remaining options, while a move through the middle can sweep a long line in one press. FoxMind sold the square as a version with new play, and the shape is the reason the play is new — you can line bubbles up in rows and columns, count them off, and build openings a ring simply can't produce. A square also stacks flat and travels better, which is something you notice when the game gets carried to a friend's house and needs to survive the trip.

How Target Turned the Game Into Pop It in 2019

In 2019 FoxMind signed an agreement to introduce the game under an exclusive brand, Pop It!, at Target, and it was an instant hit. Target is a national shelf, and a national shelf is what moved the name out of the hobby-game corner and into the main aisle, where most shoppers first met it.

The obvious objection is that Pop It only exploded in 2020, when cheap imports, short videos, and dollar-store bins turned the bubble board into a fad, so tying the name to a 2013 board game sounds like a stretch. The record doesn't support that reading. FoxMind's own account of the naming and the Target deal dates the brand to 2019, a full year before the craze, which means the fad inherited a name that already existed instead of inventing one. The craze handed the game to a much bigger audience; it didn't write the name.

How the 2013 Game Differs From Today's Fidget

Put the 2013 game and a 2024 bubble board side by side and the difference is the paperwork. The original came with rules, a losing condition, and a two-player format; the version sold as a stress toy has none of that. A child in a car seat pressing rows of bubbles is making the same physical motion as a player taking a turn, but nobody is counting, nobody can lose, and there is no second player to out-think. Strip the rules out of Last Mouse Lost and what's left is exactly the silicone pad on the shelf.

A skeptic would say kids press the bubbles either way, so splitting hairs between a game and a fidget is pointless. It matters because the rule set is the product: the count-down, the losing condition, and the pass-it-back format are what make the object a game rather than a stress toy, and the square Go Bong carried the same rules in a different footprint. That is why Go Bong plays differently from a plain bubble pad even though both are molded from the same material.

Why the Name on the Box Actually Matters

The name on the box is the fastest way to tell which object you're holding. Last Mouse Lost and Go Bong are the game versions, from 2013 and 2014, and for a collector the older printings are the ones worth keeping — a different name, a different shape, the same FoxMind lineage. Pop It is the retail name that arrived with the Target deal, which is why an unopened Pop It box from 2019 reads as a piece of toy history while a 2023 one reads as the third identical pad in a discount bin.

Knockoffs complicate that. Most copies borrow the generic bubble-board look and one of its casual spellings, skip the rules insert, and carry no brand history at all, so a buyer who wants the original ends up paying for the shape without the game. Check two things before you buy: whether the packaging actually names FoxMind, and whether there is a printed rules sheet inside. A board with a rules insert is a game you can still play; a board without one is just the raw material.

This isn't for someone who just wants a cheap, silent thing to squeeze through a meeting — for that, any bubble board will do and the whole history is beside the point. It's for the buyer who wants the original FoxMind game, the printed rules, and a two-player round that ends with someone losing on the last bubble. If that's you, look for Last Mouse Lost or Go Bong on the box before you look at the price.