Monkey Dunk

The Monkey Flippin’ Game with the Elefun Surprise! from Hasbro

“Slam dunk the fun!”

First impressions: This game does need adult set-up but thankfully we found it quick and easy to get ready so not too much chance of the little ones losing interest while waiting for the game to begin.

The idea is to launch your monkeys into the lagoon – and to land them in one of the four swimming holes. A banana token is awarded for every monkey that lands in a hole and the player who collects the most bananas wins. Each player starts off with four monkeys of the same colour and  – all at the same time – the players launch their monkeys (by pressing their tails) into the swimming holes.

The surprise is, of course, the Elefun popper! Before the monkeys are launched the Elefun popper is ‘unlocked’ and placed into one of the swimming holes in the lagoon. Elefun will ‘pop up’ out of the water unexpectedly during the game, bouncing all the ‘landed’ monkeys around. The game continues until all the banana tokens are collected. Then simply count the tokens and see who has won.

What’s good about it: Its a fun, fast and frantic game and the more players you have the more fun (and frantic :-)) it becomes.

There is also the option of making the game harder for older players by placing the lily pad blocker into one of the four swimming holes at the beginning of the round. Any monkeys landing in that swimming hole aren’t counted and the game continues.

The downside… We found the monkeys a little hard to launch, lots of practice sessions were needed, which could get a little boring for the little ones and in fact we ended up by compromising a little and launching the monkeys from the top of the lid of the box, which meant that at least the monkeys didn’t have to be angled upwards in order to get close to the lagoon.

Also we felt that more could have been made of the Elefun popper. This just sits there silently until it pops… which I guess is the idea but our little ones would have got even more excited if it made some kind of ticking noise to indicate it was actually working as it would have built up the anticipation and excitement even more. 🙂

To sum it up: A good family fun game for older pre-schoolers. The age range of 4+ is certainly spot on and although you can play with two players its much more fun – and chaotic – with more!

Mybabycanplay rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂

Thanks to http://mummynews.com/