Matt Carlson: Is it a game for kids, or just a toy?
As a quick check of my last few posts demonstrates, I’ve been on a quest to find some games to play with my up and coming three year old son. In an interest to find games that I would also enjoy, I have tended to err on the older side of the age bracket. Unfortunately, that has usually resulted in games that were fun to fiddle around with, but weren’t quite played “as written”. After my last few posting on kids games, I was given the opportunity to check out a few more titles that were on the younger side of things. While they were all quite a hit with my son, and we continue to play with them on a regular basis, I find that they tend to lack enough “game” qualities to escape the moniker of “toy”.
Memory Match
OK, this is really just a homemade game I made a few months back, but I thought I’d share the idea with the community. I was figuring my son was at the right age to start playing a memory matching game, you know the one where you flip up two cards trying to find a match? After searching many, many local stores for a simple deck of picture cards to use in a game I finally had a revelation. I had a stack of inkjet printable business cards I wasn’t using, and a deck of solid-backed card sleeves I could use to put them in. So I abandoned my quest and simply created my own memory match game. This has turned out very well. As any good boy his age, my son is a big fan of the Cars movie. I simply web surfed around and found a perfect site that had many, many fairly high quality images of cars from the movie. I set up a spreadsheet (maybe it was a Word document) and inserted two copies of each candidate car on the page. When I was done, I had about 10 pairs of cars from the movie with which to play our game together. It sees regular play (about once or twice a week), and my son shows promise at getting fairly good at the game. I still have to work on the whole concept of taking turns, though.
Pop the Pig
I received a press release about this game from the new US distributor of Goliath Games, talking about how it is all the rage in the rest of the world, and is now being brought to the United States. The game consists of four brightly colored sets of plastic hamburgers (each set numbered 1 to 4) and a large plastic pig dressed as a chef. On your turn, roll the die to see which color burger to grab. Take the appropriate burger and flip it over to look at the number underneath. You then put the burger into the pig’s mouth and press down on it’s head that many times. Pressing the pig head slowly inflates a balloon in the pig’s stomach which swells up and eventually pops open the pig’s belt. Whoever pops the pig’s belt open loses. The used hamburgers can be retrieved out the back of the pig, and the balloon is deflated with a switch in the back (the pig’s tail). Buckle the belt and you’re good to play again. I’ve played it about a half-dozen times in the past few weeks (more if you count just messing around with it), and while my oldest really gets into the game, I’ve found that he doesn’t press the pig’s head hard enough to inflate the pig’s belly. (It can be “pressed” without engaging the inflator apparently…) The game is rated for ages 4+, and that would probably be a good ranking if you want to play the game “correctly”. Since there isn’t much game there, I don’t expect it to be all that exciting for anyone much older than 4 (maybe 5). It is unfortunate that pressing the pig head correctly needs such a firm touch, as it would be a great game for the 3 year old crowd (provided they aren’t going to choke on the pretty colored hamburgers.) Aside from the pumping mechanism, the quality of components are very high. The plastic belt buckle feels a bit flimsy but seems to do the job, but the pig’s belly is made of a very nice rubber/plastic and I don’t have any fear of it breaking without first withstanding some serious abuse…
Litterbug - Travel Edition
Of the three games from Goliath I got to play, this one was the simplest but is also my favorite (and is also probably my son’s favorite.) It would fall into the extremely simple category of “game” where players perform actions but don’t ever get to make any decisions. This game consists of a plastic trash can (just a bit bigger than a fist). There are buttons all around the outside of the lid. Take turns pressing the buttons and sooner or later (randomly determined), a fly will pop-up out of the lid like a jack-in-the-box. Played as a game, players take turns pressing buttons and you are “out” if you make the fly appear. Reset the game by pressing the fly back into its spring and continue until only one player is left. Not really much of a game, but this is a great toy. It is all one piece, so no little pieces to get lost and pressing the buttons are rather fun, the tension just increases until that fly finally pops up. The game is rated 4+ I believe but any kid who can be trusted not to break off and eat the fly would have a great time with it. I now use it as a car-ride toy to help alleviate 3 year-old boredom. I even brought the game in to the local game club and made everyone use it to determine the first player for our games. At a little more than $10, it would make a pretty good (if a tad bulky) stocking stuffer…
OK, now I’ve really lost the boardgame vision and will mention a couple things that aren’t even games by any stretch of the imagination. However, they are both toys and for this age group (toddler+). At that age, the line between a game and a toy is very small indeed.
Domino Express Classic
This is a small set of plastic dominoes that are designed only for setting up and knocking down, they don’t have any markings that could be used for playing a game. Upon opening the box, I was somewhat disappointed in the quality of the dominoes. They are brightly colored plastic (nice) about half the size of normal dominoes (not so nice). Thankfully, the molds used for the pieces have nice flat sides so the dominoes stand up pretty well despite their light weight and small size. All of this would be rather underwhelming, if it weren’t for the special domino tracks included in the box. In addition to a small pile of loose colored dominoes, the box contains several specialized tracks that have attached dominoes so that with a simple little flip, you have a line of dominoes all set up and ready to knock down. The box has two straight lines and one quarter circle curve with roughly a dozen or so dominoes on each. There is also a nifty sort of wavy double-camel hump bridge with attached dominoes. By flipping these each upside down and then carefully setting them down in line with each other, you can make a several foot long track of dominoes in half a minute. When knocking down dominoes with a toddler, this is a godsend! When I tried setting up the loose dominoes, my son would more often than not, bump the table before he even got a chance to knock down the first one. (This isn’t reflective of the domino set itself, more of the conditions of use.) The final cherry on top of the sundae that is this game is an actual domino loop-the-loop. A bit tricky to put together the first time (there are some instructions, but it is mostly a figure it out yourself kind of deal), this is a rubber-band loaded launcher that sends one of the loose dominoes up and around a loop to keep the falling domino chain going. A special weighted domino is used as the trigger to set off the rubber band powered launcher. Of all the specialized bits in the box, I found this one to be a bit tricky. The weighted domino doesn’t quite trigger the launch 100% of the time, and the launcher will sometimes fail to get the domino sent in a full loop. Thus, this step in the domino chain seems to work only about 80% of the time. Overall, I like the domino set (especially for the price). At first I was very disappointed at the size and weight of the included dominoes, however the specialized toys of the set won me over. I would recommend “real” dominoes for older kids, but if you want to knock over dominoes with younger kids and need to be able to set something “cool” up in a hurry, all the funky little gadgets of this collection are a welcome feature.
Ball Track (Basic Pack)
The last new toy I’ve been playing with my son lately is HABA’s wooden block and marble set simply called Ball Track (Basic Pack). In contrast with Domino Express, these blocks are nice and hefty, made of good quality wood. Of course, the price reflects that as well – running about $45 for the set. Included in the set are a number of small rectangular blocks about the width of your hand and square blocks half that size. In addition, there are four marble ramps (two long and two short), three cube blocks with holes in them to help marbles turn corners, some wooden dominoes, and a few small cylinders for (I assume) decoration. Included in the setup are just enough blocks to lay out all four ramps, which slightly limits possible setups. However, most of the other HABA block sets (and other standard block sets) work interchangeably with the blocks in this set, so the setup is easy to expand, if desired. There are a dozen wooden dominoes included, and these are a nice touch, as they can add a bit more to the setup when placed at the bottom of a marble run. The recommended age for the set is 3+ years. While that is a fine age to be playing with the blocks (younger is even possible if they don’t eat the marbles), the marble ramps are pretty sensitive. For example, I had hoped the “corner” cubes could be used to drop the marble vertically down and shoot it out onto another ramp, but the marbles gain too much speed and don’t settle back down into the next ramp. I think it might be possible, but only with a lot of fine tuning. When used correctly (cubes with holes are used to turn 90 degree corners in a plane), the marbles work much better (surprise!), however the speed of the marbles can sometimes slowly bump the cornering cubes out of alignment as well. Thus, the set does not really allow a parent to set up a path and then let a younger child play with it by dropping marbles unsupervised. The paths can easily get out of alignment after a few runs and need adjusting. This is a significant downside for use of the blocks on the younger end (3-4 maybe), but could be seen as an advantage for older kids (5+) where overcoming such challenges provides a nice sense of accomplishment. Other than the marble ramps being somewhat “fiddly”, the production quality is top notch and this is the kind of toy that will be around for your grandkids to play with.
As is all the rage nowadays, I thought I’d put in the disclaimer that most of the stuff I mentioned today was provided to me for a review. If you’re all “kid gamed” out, next time will be a different focus. In the meantime, I’ll be working on my annual boardgame holiday shopping guide (since 2002!). I’ll be sure to pass along a link when it is finished. For those in the US, have a happy Turkey Day and I’ll see you after the sales.
© 2009 Matt J. Carlson
Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Nov 14, 2009 at 10:17 PM in Columnists, Matt J. Carlson, Gone Gaming / 2973
