Hungry Hippos by MB games.

Another one of MB Games (or otherwise known as Milton Bradley) board games and it has been around for years. MB makes lots of board games, they began in the mid-1800s and have been making games almost constantly since.


I remember seeing the adverts for Hungry Hippos as a kid and it always looked so appealing.
I tend to always buy at least one board game every Christmas, just a tradition we have gotten into, and this is among our growing collection. I have to admit that this is not one of my favourite game, as it just seems so pointless to me but both my sons seem to like it, not that my youngest of two and a half really understands the game; he just finds it funny to watch the hippos eat all of the marbles, but I do keep a very close eye on him because I am concerned about the chocking risk with the marbles.

Essentially the game is a red plastic tray in which you attach four coloured plastic hippos in pink, yellow, green and orange which you attach to each side of the tray, each of these have plastic handles which you push down to open the hippos mouth and stretch out his neck to try and collect as many of the twenty white marbles, which are placed in the tray, as you possibly can. The game can get rough, my oldest gets a little too enthusiastic and bangs on the handle shouting and laughing with excitement and my youngest cheers from the side line finding the whole situation very entertaining. The game itself is incredibly noisy because the plastic mouths bang against the plastic base.

This is quite a hardy game and I am very surprised that my oldest son hasn't broken it yet because he can be very heavy handed. Even with him playing very roughly the game is still going very strong. The instructions are very straight forward not that the assembly and game rules are very complicated anyway. I can't recall what I paid for mine but I have bought one for my nephew for Christmas and it cost £14.99 from Argos but you can purchase it in most toyshops and even some supermarkets for around the same price. There are cheaper versions available on the market but I can't vouch for the quality and there is also a travel game available which is quite fun and also no hunting for balls when the bouncy off the tray, which happens frequently due to over enthusiasm.

The game is designed for four and over and I would not let younger children play unsupervised with it due to the chocking risk with marbles. The size is 26.6cm x 26.7cm x 10.1cm and is for two to four players. It needs to be dis assembled to be placed back in the box for storage and the bag that the marbles come in is not ideal for storing them after opening so I have made a small fabric pouch to keep them in. This is a really fun game but really very noisy and not ideal if you suffer from headaches.