kerplunking good fun (Kerplunk)

Member Name: blackviolets

Product:	Kerplunk
Date:	01/06/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun and simple to play

Disadvantages: new design makes it a bit annoying

Due to a lack of communication at Christmas I ended up with two kerplunk sets. I must say I was a bit surprised but I think the reason why I got them was because I had mentioned quite regularly that it was my favourite childhood game.

The concept of the game is pretty simple - very gently pull the sticks out of the little holes without letting the marbles drop into your section. Easy. The problem is the sticks are very tightly packed together-forming a complicated map of criss crosses where any of the marbles could slip down.

A few things I've discovered is that it is perfectly acceptable to very carefully flick a marble with your stick so it lands somewhere else. This takes a lot of concentration so try and zone out from all the distractions which will no doubt be thrown your way.

Like all old games which work perfectly well beforehand, the company who makes them think they need to be updated. This is what happened to Kerplunk and although it's not a big change it does get a bit infuriating. The old design was a plastic tube which stood upright on a base which was split into 4 sections. When it was your turn you moved the tube slightly so that when the marbles eventually fell, they'd drop into your area.

Now they've opted for a tube which is, for want of a better word, curved on the inside. A bit like one of those helter skelter slides. So instead of dropping, the marbles have to follow the curved structure. Because of this the marbles constantly get stuck in the little bends making you have to shake it slightly-inevitably more marbles fall down because of this. As I mentioned before I had two sets and this happened with both of them. And yes, I had put them together properly.

It still takes ages to set up because the holes where the sticks go in are very tiny and even then you have to battle with the marbles to make sure they don't fall down before you've even started playing. I've always said it takes about 15 minutes to put together and then just 2 minutes to play.

Because the sticks are multi coloured you can say that each player can only pick out 1 shade, so player 1 can only take out sticks which are blue, player 2 yellow and so on.

Also there is a marble which is gold in colour. You can pick whether if that one drops into your section means you can take away 5 of your marbles at the end of the game or add them on.

This is a fun game, especially for young children. Unfortunetly it is still noisy when the marbles fall with a noisy clatter but there isn't anything you can do about that. It's aimed for children 4+ and I would recommend it if they hadn't of changed the design. However if you do it needs to obviously been played on a flat surface.

Summary: .