August 2010 Notable Toys — General Games

Automobile™ carries you back to the birth of America’s car industry, when inventors, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs created a wild array of marvels and misfortunes. You step into this rough, romantic trade hoping to create a fortune by building and selling cars. Tapping the talents of men like Ford, Sloan, Kettering, Howard, Durant, and Chrysler, you balance quality versus quantity, mass production versus premium branding, and innovation versus distribution and aggressive sales. Lose your balance and you go bust. Strike the best balance, shift the right gears to best your rivals, and you’ll be rich. You might even win. So, pull up your sleeves and start making cars.

For 3-5 Players. Playing Time 90-120 minutes.

Players assign a value to a ticket and collect the face value for each ticket sold. Holiday ticket themes include Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and generic holiday/winter. The guest who has the winning ticket may be given a gift, while the money collected can go to a charity or to the host of the holiday party — or the guest who holds the winning ticket may be awarded the entire pot of money.

The Chat Pack contains 156 cards, each featuring a question meant to get people talking. This game is designed for dinner parties, family gatherings, car trips, and classroom activities.

This two-to-four-player addition and subtraction game takes kids on a journey through Sum Swamp. Players make their way over the crocodile shortcut and through the endless loop by adding and subtracting the numbers rolled.

Each turn, one team flips over a category card and team members quickly brainstorm words that fit the category. The team agrees on a word before the time runs out and then pulls each letter in that word one lane closer to their side of the street. The first team to pull eight letters off the street wins. Word on the Street Junior is designed to encourage vocabulary development, creative thinking and teamwork, and is "great for all ages and all group sizes," Out of the Box VP of Marketing Leah Sugar told TDmonthly.
Awards: 2010 Mensa Select; 2010 Major Fun; 2010 Oppenheim Gold; 2010 Dr. Toy Best Vacation Product; 2010 Parent's Choice Silver
— Verlina Adema of What You Reading Now played Word on the Street Junior with her three children and enjoyed that the game required teamwork and brainstorming. As a homeschool mom, she appreciated that “This game incorporates visual, auditory and tactile learning styles so there is something for every child!”
— The Board Game Family described Word on the Street Junior as the perfect party game because “every time we play it, we can’t stop with just one play…But that’s just great because the second game is always louder, more energetic, and lasts longer for a lot more fun.”

Old School FIKI Football is a tabletop football game with a genuine leather triangle "football." It includes a goalpost and 5" x 7" replica football field. "FIKI Football is patented and the only genuine leather tabletop football game on the market," Richard M. Crasnick, president of FIKI SPORTS, told TDmonthly.

Les Mess is an organizational card game designed to encourage kids to pitch in when it comes time to clean and get rid of clutter. By completing one of the tasks on the cards, children earn a prize while making the home more organized.
— Jennifer from The Dirty tShirt tried the cards and found them simple enough for even her toddler. She recommended Les Mess “to everyone trying to teach their children the wonders of organizing their things.”
— Quiverfull Family’s Jennifer used Les Mess to get all of her children excited about cleaning and organizing. She said Les Mess is best “when approached with a light heart, and a fun-filled attitude.”

Designed to allow practice and improvement for spelling skills, this 2- to 6-player game comes with a colorful game board, a tri-colored die, six bee playing pieces, 300 Buzzleword cards and 50 Buzzlebee cards. The spelling words are taken from actual school lists, and the adult version is ideal for family game night or play with friends. The game includes spelling words at three levels of difficulty.

Formerly called Patchwork, FlipOut is a fast-paced logic game for two to five players designed to build logic, memory and patterning skills in a fun setting. Players trade colorful, two-sided cards between plastic racks to create sets, or steal them from each other. Game play takes 20 to 30 minutes.

Stix & Stones is a prehistoric picture-making race designed to build fine motor, creative and social skills. Kids can create like a caveman using only sticks and stones; no drawing skills are required. Players make a picture with as few pieces as possible, then challenge each other to guess what it is. Along with 40 plastic sticks, 15 plastic stones, an arrow and a timer, Stix & Stones features 75 game cards providing 450 words of varying difficulty, ensuring a different game every time. Instructions and a storage bag are included.

In this game, three to eight players get the chance to be seriously rich but must beware of the Taxman. Participants fiddle in finance, dabble in real estate, or make millions in movies, and should be clear thinking, quick of hand and shout the loudest. There is no set order of play. Players simply shuffle cards according to the number of players, deal, then shout or trade their way to build up a full set of cards and make a billion dollar fortune.

This is the kids version of the classic game of people, places, and things, where clues are given to players who must deduce the item's identity. One player acts as the clue giver while the others try to solve the secret identity, and each clue that's read reveals more about the secret identity. I am reddish in color, I don't have any rings, and a candy bar shares my name. What am I? The trick is to solve the identity in the fewest number of clues.

Inspired by Eric Carle's ABC book, this game in a tin introduces children to the alphabet by teaching them the difference between big and little letters. Players spin the spinner and search for letter cards that match their space. The game includes one game board, four playing pieces, one spinner, 52 animal/letter cards and instructions.

This always changing, ever rearranging crossword game has 60 more tiles than the original and comes in a tile storage bag for travel. Players draw letter tiles and build their own personal crosswords as fast as they can. Whenever players use all their letters they yell, "Pick two" and everyone draws more tiles, which must then be added to their crosswords. Letters and words can be re-arranged, allowing players to use up their tiles.