Tomy Pop Up Pirate is a really nice game to play as a family. It is simple and straightforward enough for young children to participate fully, but also has just enough fun to keep older children and adults entertained.

The game consists of various parts that need to be very simply joined together before starting. This is not problematic at all. You have a base with a barrell on, and a quite friendly-looking pirate, who sits in a hole in the top of the barrell. You need to push him down into the barrell to set the game - there's a spring or something hidden underneath, which is where the fun comes from!

There are sets of different coloured little plastic swords, one set per player (up to 4 players). Gameplay is very simple - you just take turns to push one of your swords into one of the little slots on the side of the barrell. One of these slots will trigger the spring mechanism and the little pirate chappy will be flung out of the barrell - always makes us all jump! The aim of the game is not to be the one who sends the pirate flying (although if you have fractious kids having a strop about losing, you could always turn it around and have them win if they do it).

My kids are 3 and 9. The 3-year-old I think is just at the perfect level for this - when he was a little younger he used to nearly jump out of his skin when the pirate popped up and was a little tense when we played! Now he relishes the little fright we all get and laughs fabulously. The 9-year-old still enjoys this, partly because of the jump, but partly because he tries to work out which particular slot is the trigger - it's not that hard to do, so you'll need to have a bit of barrell-twisting if you want to stop the older ones getting bored too quickly.

All in all this is a great little game, it isn't something you would play for hours on end, but is good for half an hour or so of simple fun. It's available for about £12 from Amazon, which I think is too expensive really given that, although fun, the game doesn't hold the children's attention for as long as some others. We got ours for about 50p from the charity shop and I would highly recommend that approach!