So its officially the summer holidays in the OneDadOneBlog house. H had broke up from school, after a successful first year. D is also on a reduced nursery routine, thanks to a separate term time contract on one of her days, and Mrs F also benefits from holidays (albeit not all of them) in the school holidays. As for me, other than a fortnight booked in, I’ll be enjoying the peace and quiet that my full time day job brings. Mrs F mean while will be in the same boat as many other parents, how to keep her and the children sane.. and hopefully John Adams Toys new board games will fill some of the days….
Fresh from the makers of young children favourites such as Doggie Doo, Sands Alive and the recent Christmas top toy, Silly Sausage, John Adams Toys have released three new board games aimed at the 4+ age range and we were lucky enough to be able to give them a hands on test.
Don’t Be A Donkey
The aim of this game is to collect a full set of donkey cards before your opponents and in doing so, you get to nab one of the carrots. With only limited carrots available, if you’re the player without one when the round finishes, you must start to dress like a Donkey with the help of the donkey ears and mask. The first person to dress like a donkey loses.
Both Mrs F and I as well as the children loved it, although much of the fun was initially spent just dressing as donkeys, this didn’t impact the fun and fast paced nature of the game with all us laughing at each other looking a little funny wearing donkey ears and masks alike.
A good, easy playable and fun game.
Mr Bucket
Labelled at the original, racing, bucket chasing game, unfortunately this game was a little bit of a let down for us.
The aim of the same is simple, 4 colours of balls are placed into Mr Bucket and each player picks a colour and a spade. Turn the bucket on and they travel around the room and spit out balls randomly. The first player to get all their balls back into Mr Bucket first wins.
Despite being very easy to set up, the game needs to be played on a flat surface such as laminate, wooden or tiled floors. This was initially fine as we chose to play in our galley type kitchen however the instructions do stipulate for best results use a floor, 2×2 meters minimum. Sadly, as our kitchen width is just shy of this, the bucket kept getting stuck when hitting the side cupboards which in turn stops spitting the balls back out.. so was halting the game every 30 seconds.
The children initially loved the chaos the game brings but quickly got fed up be the constant stopping so lost interest equally quick. This game really didn’t work for us but if you have a large flat space, I’m sure the game may be fun for you.
Giggle Wiggle
This was our favourite of the bunch… think an Alice in Wonderland ‘esk’ caterpillar doing a belly dance whilst turning around. The aim of the game is to place small marble type balls into its hands whilst this is happening. The first person to get all their coloured balls into its hands wins.
Its not as easy as it sounds though as even once you have placed the balls into the hands, the wiggling of the caterpillar occasionally tosses the balls out of its hands and sends them bouncing across the floor giving your opponents time to catch up.
We really did have fun giggling and playing this one as per the video below and as I mentioned above, this was the winner in our house.
A couple of overall comments to make;
- Two of the three games require AA batteries (Giggle Wiggle and Mr Bucket) so make sure you have some in stock as I committed the ultimate fail and showed them to the children before realising we were out of batteries, cue a trip to the supermarket.
- The age ranges of all the games is aged 4 onwards however D was able to join in and understand both Mr Bucket and Giggle Wiggle so don’t worry if you have younger children as she’s still only 2 years old (3 in September).
- The prices of all these games retail at £24.99 which I would be happy to pay for two of the three games mentioned above but mainly as our flooring doesn’t allow Mr Bucket to be successful here.
For more information on the three games featured and more, check out John Adams Toys now.
Are you looking forward to the summing holidays?
Until next time
NB: We were provided with all three mentioned board games in exchange for an honest review, all opinions remain our own.