Pop Goes Froggio

Pop Goes Froggio – The Fast-Matching Frog-Catching Game from Hasbro

“Great fun for all the family, we were just going to let the kids play but it looked like too much fun!”

First impressions: I was a little unsure about Pop Goes Froggio as from the description on the box it sounded fairly complicated for three-year-olds to master, and the images of the children playing looked older but I needn’t have worried as the game is really simple and pretty addictive!

The idea is to place the 12 lily pads around the room – each conceals a picture of one of Froggio’s friends underneath. Then, taking it in turns, each player spins the butterfly spinner and when the spinner stops on one of Froggio’s friends, its a mad dash to find the matching picture under a lily pad. Pads turned over showing the wrong friend are turned back and the search continues until someone finds a match.

The Lily pad is then dropped back onto the floor – face up – and whoever found it runs to the centre of the room – where Froggio is waiting – and stomps on the lily pad launcher to send Froggio hopping into the air…

Now the tough part, you have to catch Froggio BEFORE he lands… if you catch him then you keep the lily pad, if not, it goes back on the floor, character-side down.

The game is to keep spinning, stomping and catching until all the lily pads have been collected and the player with the most lily pads wins 🙂

What’s good about it: Its really easy to set up, the Lily pad spinner/launcher comes in two parts that just push together the first time its used; Froggio just sits on top of the launcher and there’s just the 12 cardboard lily pads to lay out. Children could certainly do this without adult help so its pretty kid-friendly.

There are also instructions included for younger players (place the lily pad cards with the character face-up and little-ones can either catch Froggio on the way down or pick him up once he’s landed) which was a definite plus for us as ‘the monkey’ is not three yet and certainly wouldn’t have been able to catch Froggio mid-jump.

The launcher itself seems pretty sturdy – it will need to be with players stomping on it again and again – but Froggio himself is made from soft foam which hopefully means no nasty incidents with frog/human collisions!

The downside… Actually I couldn’t really find one with this game, the only thing that could be a problem – and this is really just with younger children playing – is that the launcher does need to be stomped on pretty hard to get Froggio to fly properly, so maybe when playing with younger children get a team-mate (or mummy/daddy) to launch it for them.

To sum it up: A good fun game for children (and if you’re like me!) adults alike. The box says 2-4 players but you could easily play with more, and although its most suitable for ages three and above, with a little help younger ones can join in the fun too.

Just one word of warning… make sure you’ve tidied up everything else off the floor before you start playing, as there’s lots of dashing about to find the right lily pads… and the bigger the room you play in, the better (counteracting potential collisions here!). Actually there’s nothing to prevent playing this game outside either… maybe another plus?

Mybabycanplay rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂

Thanks to http://mummynews.com/