My twin boys who turned 4 in November have now developed a love for games, mostly because they like showing Mama up when they win and I lose!

For this reason, the other week I purchased the game Pop Up Pirate.

The game cost just over £10 from Argos but can be bought from the majority of toy retailers, even some supermarkets will stock this over the festive period as it is a popular game.

The game comes in a chubby cardboard box decorated with pictures of the game itself, all bright and colourful and quite appealing too.

The game is suitable for children aged 3 plus, however depending on the child of course, I'd say this could be played from 2 and a half upwards providing an adult is supervising them.

Inside your wonderful box of treasure you will find a plastic barrel with a hole at the top and slots all around it. A selection of coloured swords, and a round headed plastic pirate. The swords come in different colours red, yellow, green and blue - which allows up to 4 people to play this game, however a minimum of 2 can play the game too.

The aim of the game is to place your swords within the slots in the barrel trying not to pop the Pirate up. The Pirate sits comfortable within the hole at the top of the barrel, but beneath him is a plastic 'spring' which when 'knocked' pops the pirate up and out of the barrel.

Game play is actually quite short, especially when there are less players, as it doesn't take long to Pop up the Pirate - resulting in a loser if more than 2 people play or if 2 people are playing it is the end of the game completely, meaning the process has to be repeated to play the game again.

It is a very simple game, for the younger children it is a tense and exciteable game and usually results in at least one person jumping a mile when the Pirate does pop up in the air. I find my boys do get bored of the game quite quickly, and tend to make up their own rules or just play with the game during their roleplay games as the game itself is shortlived excitement. Once the pirate has popped out and frightened them twice they are usually fed up and want to play by their own rules. So although a good game and really good buy this is the main reason I say the game is suitable for children younger than 3, or it doesn't really have much life in it.