They've made a Pig's Ear of this one! (Jumbo Peppa Pig Jumbolino)

Member Name: azana

Product:	Jumbo Peppa Pig Jumbolino
Date:	04/08/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small cheap

Disadvantages: greatly outweigh the advantages

If you have ever played a board, or any other game, with a three year old you will know that when things go wrong they can be prone to throwing various bits around and/or breaking down in uncontrollable sobbing when they lose. If you play a game and feel like joining in with this behaviour it is probably a very bad sign. I am afraid this Peppa Pig Jumbolino has lead to me nearly throwing it out of the window on many an occassion, it is a very frustrating game for all concerned.

Good things first:

Based on the traditional Beetle game and featuring the ever popular Peppa Pig this board game is compact and the right size for taking in a suitcase on holiday, being about 18cm by 14cm (measured with my daughter's Peppa Pig ruler natch), and 5cm deep. It was a cheap game, around £3 from Sainsbury's, it is also available from Amazon.

There are 6 boards featuring Peppa in a bobbly hat, all nicely printed and the cardboard is good quality and thick. There are two die and also 6 body pieces for each Peppa, more of which later, and also the rules.

Where it all goes wrong:

This game is allegedly for the 3 and up market. The boards with the bits of Peppa to fit in are a nice idea but for a start they must have been made by someone who hadn't actually played a board game with a child ever, or had very strangely patient children.

The pieces are fiddly, apart from a very big head,Peppa has two teeny boot-clad feet and tiddly arms. Admittedly these are true to the illustrations from the TV programme but they are too small for a 3 year old to manipulate and don't fit into the board with ease. A six year old might manage but by that age they are unlikely to be huge Peppa fans in my experience. Being so small the pieces are easily lost too.

The rules have not been adapted for younger children. You have to throw a "1" to get started, and slot in the body. This takes a while, thereby stretching the preschooler's patience, and also has no educational value - they could have printed numbers on the body parts, but no, there are teeny incy-wincey pictures of the dice instead that you would practically need a magnifying glass to see.

So - so far, badly designed and rules quite annoying. It gets worse.

Now excuse me for not having mathematical geniuses for children but there being 2 die you are supposed to throw them and use the sum of the die any way you want to get the body parts - confused? Let me quote from the rules "for a left arm you must either throw one 4, or 1 and 3, or double 2. If your throw is of no use to you, you are not allowed an extra turn". Still confused? My children were pretty confused too funnily enough, if throwing two die were not challenge enough they were actually supposed to add up the dots in their head and then possibly divide them? It wasn't going to happen, neither was them grasping the idea from elsewhere in the rules that they could start off more than one body and grab someone else's if they threw a double six - were the game's manufacturer trying to encourage sibling war with this one?

Overall:

If you haven't guessed already we find this a frustrating and annoying game. We have tried to adapt the rules to make it less of a pointless challenge, we love Peppa Pig and the youngest does ask to play this game, but it is freecycle bound soon I am afraid as being far too frustrating for us.

We do have Peekabo Peppa which is another game in this range, purchased by granny and that is much, much better.

Nice as the idea is of playing beetle in a Peppa fashion this game is badly executed and disappointing in the extreme, I cannot in all good faith, suggest that anyone purchase it, if you wanted to play "Beetle" a dice, some paper and pens would provide for a cheaper and less annoying way of passing some time. Maybe 3 year olds just aren't supposed to play Beetle.

Summary: an annoyingly bad game - betrayed by Peppa