Consider using a game production company

First, we have not worked directly with either of the two firms you mention, other than getting quotes a few years back. Second - in the interests of full disclosure - Blue Panther publishes games and also does custom mfg.

The first set of questions to ask should be...

1) How many do you want to make / sell?

This will drive alot of the rest of your decisions.

2) How do you want to sell them (yourself/cons/internet or the hobby channel or the mass market channel)?

This will drive how much you charge for it - you can have lower sales price yet higher potential margins if you do it yourself - but you're going to work for it. For hobby channel and even more important for mass market, you're going to need to control costs. And don't expect to get paid when you ship. It takes a while in the hobby or mass market channel. You can also use an agent/consolidator to rep you for the hobby channel - which is another alternative - but that also takes some of your margin. On the other hand they will do some of your sales and fulfillment and you will be available to all distributors globally - not a bad thing for a new title from a new company.

3) How much work do you want to do?

You can save some money if you do some of the work of game creation/assembly yourself. You might save money if you act as your own publisher/general contractor by getting all the components from different suppliers and doing the assembly yourself - or you might get a better deal from a one-stop-shop. Price shop both options.

4) Think about the niche market. If your game is on a given topic, there might be a group of people out there it was made for and they don't even know it yet. We had a title a few years back about rock-paper-scissors on dice. We sold as many copies to the RPS Society (yes there is a society for this as there is for almost everything you can think of) as we did to the general market.

5) What about the prototype? Finally, since you're serious by sinking money into trademarks and other protections, I would suggest you also spend as much time and care on the final prototype (and production proof) to make sure that whoever makes your game is making it to your exact specifications. It's easier to pay $50 or $100 bucks up front than it is to go through all the finished boxes and do swap due to a printing error.

Good luck with your game.