May 2009 Notable Toys — General Games

It's a rolling polar bear jam. Roll the colored dice to collect high-scoring polar bears from the rink. Roll doubles to trip up opponents or "Free Skate" to take your pick of the pack. But press your luck too far and you may wind up flat on your face. The player with the most points skates away with the victory. Launch date: March 2009.

Players race to the photo finish in this dice game that plays out in a flash. They quickly roll their dice to match the characters on the photo booth cards. When a player matches a pair, he or she must shout "Cheese!" and collect the card. Once a player has won all the cards, he or she is picture perfect. "Say Cheese is a fast-paced, unique game that combines dice and cards to create a fun and playful enviornment," Michael Masseur, account executive at Aigner/Prensky Marketing, told TDmonthly. Launch date: March 2009.

Primo the Monkey was happily asleep until his friends swung by for a surprise pajama party. Help Primo chase away the primate pranksters by flipping and swapping cards in numerical order. Watch out for elephants and giraffes who want to crash in on the fun. And if you're lucky, draw a wild monkey card to clear out the room in one clean sweep. The first player to stop the monkey mayhem and get Primo back to bed wins. Game includes 55 cards and instructions. Launch date: March 2009.

This game expands on the original Qwirkle, challenging two to four players to score points by having the most columns and rows filled with matching shapes and colors. Rolling the cubes adds an element of strategy, as players can attempt to roll for the shapes they need. Launch date: Spring 2009.
— Kate Tanner, owner of Kidstop in Scottsdale, Ariz., named Qwirkle Cubes as one of her overall best sellers in late fall 2009.

Threatened by natural disasters and sometimes the need for safety measures, up to eight players must work together to construct as many homes as possible. The houses are from various cultures in various stages of history, offering an educational slant on the many different kinds of shelter in the world. It comes with a 12” x 12” board, diecut homes, and natural disaster, safety measure and rebuild cards.

In this challenging and fun rapid-fire electronic word game, the object is to make words from a series of displayed letters against the time constraints of a ticking bomb that is being passed from player to player as they wrack their brains for the right word.

This adult social game tests players’ knowledge of friends, family and themselves with such questions as, “Do you think you’re attractive?” and “Have you ever lied about your age?” The ballot box is private, so players maintain their privacy on personal matters. Players vote yes or no, and the one who can best predict the number of yeses, wins the game.

The Touch & Learn Super Duper Computer features a fully interactive touchscreen and more than 36 literacy activities. Each Super WHY! Character has a series of games that help children master different literacy skills, including alphabet skills, problem solving, spelling, word families, word comprehension, rhyming, and reading.

This deluxe game set come with seven monter-themed games. The three-tiered box includes Moody Monsters matching game, a 56-card deck of playing cards with four different game instructions, and a Mix & Match puzzle game. Moody Monsters features 15 different monsters, each addressing the social and emotional needs of children.

Quackgammon is an easier way-to-play variation of backgammon in a travel format. Each player moves his flock of three “mallards” around a lake. The fowl are protected by staying positioned next to each other so that the lone fowl is not a “sitting duck."

An enhanced version of Tic-Tac-Toe, this game includes six magnetic game pieces: 3 0’s marked “1”, “3” and “5” and three X’s marked “2”, “4” and “6” — and a 3 x 3 game board grid. The pieces are played in numerical order. Once the six pieces are on the board, play continues in sequential fashion, with each move exposing the now-vacated square to the opponent. The action ends only when the first player achieves a three-in-a-row combination.

Conceived by 13-year old Zach Levins, Repeat or you’re obsolete is a memory game. Players make noises, act things out, create stories, make lists, and play with words in a fast-paced, memory building, pay-attention-or-you’re-out game. It includes a 32-page bonus book of memory tips and tricks. The game received a 2008 iParenting Media’s Best Children’s Product Award.

The Gryphon Games Bookshelf Series is a numbered collection of book-size games that will appeal to a wide array of players of all ages. The games in this series are of medium-weight strategy, featuring short, clear rules playable in under an hour. The first thing you’ll notice about the Gryphon Games Bookshelf Series is our emphasis on high-quality art and superior graphics and production values. The game play is always snappy and innovative. The themes are fun and interesting. Catch people on their way back to board games with the Gryphon Games Bookshelf Series. Since we are committed to adding no fewer than three games a year to this collectible series, it is sure to be the talk of the gaming community for years to come.

This brain-powered game challenges users to move a ball through an obstacle course using the power of the mind. It comes with a three-sensor headset that measures brainwave activity and determines the user's level of concentration. The game unit features a fan that blows more powerfully to lift the ball as focus increases. Launch date: 2009.

A part of the whimsical Chimp and Zee series of games from Pressman, the Zoo Who game sends children along with a zookeeper to feed the many animals living at the zoo. Each child has a card with different animals on it that they are responsible for feeding, and on their turn they take a food card from the back of the zookeeper's truck. If that food is appropriate for one of their animals, they can fill in that slot on their card. If not, it returns to the table but another player has the opportunity to snap it up if it matches an animal on their card. When a child draws the sandwich card, they lose a turn – an important aspect of the Chimp and Zoo games to help build understanding and patience when things don't always go as planned – but instead of being faced with a villain or punishment, it is simply the zookeeper stopping for his own lunch break. Launch Date: June 2009

Complete with capital letter tiles featuring various designs (dots, lines, blank and solid), this game comes packaged in a zip-open, pear-shaped pouch with a hanging rope (stem) at the top. It is designed to help kids work on cognitive skills and memory, as well as the order of the alphabet, vocabulary and rhyming as they practice forming words. Launch date: February 2009.

Complete with capital letter tiles featuring various designs (dots, lines, blank and solid), this game comes packaged in a zip-open, pear-shaped pouch with a hanging rope (stem) at the top. It is designed to help kids work on cognitive skills and memory, as well as the order of the alphabet, vocabulary and rhyming as they practice forming words. Launch date: February 2009.

As players take turns stacking their pieces on the seven wooden posts, the object is to get four in a row of their winning color or shape. Moves require extra strategy, though, as more than half of each player's pieces are the opponent's shape and can help their game. The game features wooden construction with a box to store all the pieces. It measures 12.25" L x 4.5" W x 4.5" H. Launch date: February 2009.

Game play starts by removing the towers from the base. The goal is to place the towers following two simple rules: there must be only one of each colored tower in every row and column, and the towers must fit into the base to form a perfect cube, with all the towers being the same height. Launch date: November 19, 2008.

Requiring no reading from its players, Qwirkle is a simple-to-learn but stimulating game based around matching the attributes of the game play tiles. Players build rows and columns by placing tiles adjacent to tiles they share an attribute with (shape or color), and score bonus points if they can think ahead and put a tile down touching multiple other tiles. While the game is easy to understand, a good eye and quick thinking make Qwirkle challenging enough for a wide range of ages to play together.
Awards: 2011 Speiele des Jahres (German game of the year).
― “We sell a lot of Qwirkle,” Sue Banducci said of popular games in her Danville, Calif., store, Games Unlimited. “Qwirkle was best-selling over Christmas,” said Shirley Reilly, owner of Let's Play in Hillsboro, Ore., in January 2009.
― When asked about his top-selling games in early 2009, Tye Steinbach of Thinker Toys in Portland, Ore. told TDmonthly, “It was probably Qwirkle. We're not huge gamers in our family, but it's really fun.”
— Four of 44 specialty retailers named Qwirkle as a best seller in late fall 2009. Ages & Stages Toy Box in Golden, Colo., sells about 10 Qwirkle games per month, Manager Holly Anvers told TDmonthly.
— As of 12/17/2012 this product had 4.8 out of 5 stars from 483 reviews on Amazon.com and was No. 6 on the top 100 bestselling toys and games. Pros: Exciting; intellectually stimulating, easy to learn. Cons: Some said it took too long to play; only had 3 reviews less than 3 stars, however.

The fast-moving rummy game hits the big time with a new edition featuring bright, oversized numbers. Players still create “runs” and “groups” with their numbered tiles, but now the tiles are easier to read. Orange tiles have been switched with green to make it even clearer. It is for two to four players.

Two of Around the Table's award winning games in one tin. Family Talk and Grandparent Talk cards,  each with 100 cards per deck, connect generations through fun and diverse conversations.  Available March 2009.