Does it deliver? (Toy Brokers Postman Pat Flying Letters Game)

Member Name: Suzela

Product:	Toy Brokers Postman Pat Flying Letters Game
Date:	16/02/09 (251 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great family fun

Disadvantages: Game play not ideal

What do you buy the boy who has everything? We always find it very hard to buy my nephew Christmas presents because he seems to already have any toys/books that we think of buying him. So when it comes to Christmas my sister and I sit on the phone with me logged on to Amazon and I begin to go through the whole "has he got this?" routine. This year the "no he hasn't" came when I mentioned Postman Pat's Flying Letters Game from Toy Brokers. At the moment this product is on sale at www.amazon.co.uk for £14.67 and so qualifies for free delivery.

Obviously any child that loves Postman Pat would love this game for the character value but what attracted me to it was the fact that I knew this was an all inclusive game for the family from 3 years plus. The game is designed for 2 to 4 players. It was important to me that my nephew who is 3 didn't feel excluded or confused by what he had to do. And this game seemed to have all of that.

The point of the game is that Greendale is very windy and the wind keeps making the letters fly out of the post box into the air and your job is to help Pat collect all the letters up before they hit the floor and get all dirty so that the post runs on time and the person who collects the most letters wins. Oh how Royal Mail would take a leaf out of Postman Pat's book!

Essentially what you have in your box is a plastic red post box with a long red flexible plastic tube (probably 4 feet and made out of fairly heavy gauge plastic sheeting) that fits into the top of the post box. It is attached by putting the plastic tube into an open screw cap (sorry for my female description of it) and that is screwed onto the top of the post box. It probably sounds more complicated than it is but my nephew can do it so it isn't too bad. The letters are not actually letters. They are lots of small pieces of coloured (red, yellow, green and blue) paper which are twisted in the middle. This helps them fly a bit better I suppose but if you were expecting little printed envelopes you would be disappointed. And finally you have 4 catch nets. These catch nets are made from cotton like material and are in red, yellow, green and blue with matching solid plastic handles. These are perfectly adequate for the smallest or largest hands in the family. Everything is nicely made - there are no sharp edges or anything that curious and bored hands can pull off.

The post box includes a fan covered by a grill to stop curious fingers and there is also a musical tune. I was expecting to hear "Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat ran over his......" (sorry!) which those of us of a certain age would recognise but seemingly it is a tune from Postman Pat Special Delivery which is an updated programme where Pat has access to more vehicles than Thunderbirds to deliver the mail and uses sat nav! Unfortunately you can't turn the music off - or at least we didn't find the magic button. You need 4 x C batteries to operate this (which are not included) and you will need a very small screwdriver to take the panel off - this is very handy to know when you have a 3 year old desperate to play his new game and Granddad has to go out into the shed to find one! To turn it on there is a little sliding on/off switch. It is easy to operate which is great for the youngest player but maybe not for their parents!

So to play you make sure the post box is switched off, put the "letters" on top of the grill and then attach the tubing. To be honest although a little person can do all of this the fan isn't strong enough to blow the tube open so an adult really needs to hold the tube straight. Obviously a 3 year old isn't tall enough to do this so you do need to bear this in mind. Otherwise your little person might get frustrated and pick the box up by the plastic and swing it (he only did this once!). The fact though that the fan isn't overly powerful isn't as much of a disadvantage as you might think because it does mean that the "letters" take a while to ascend up and out of the top of tube where it is then a general scrum to collect the letters in the nets.

So does it work?

Well yes and no. From the little person's perspective it works because they can play with their family and interact with them. They get varying levels of pleasure out of it because they can laugh at their Mum and Auntie pushing each other out of the way and getting each other in headlocks (we will grow up one day!) and they can help put it together, take it apart and when you are trying to put it away and you have the "letters" on top of the fan they can turn it on and run away laughing! In fact our nephew loves the game and we always have to play it even though he doesn't win because he is playing it with us. They can get something out of it but what they can't get out of it is much fun from the actual game play. The main reason being they are too short and the letters don't come out at a uniform rate so that they can't anticipate where they'll go and you do need an adult there who will invariably win because they can reach the letters first.

That said the fact that they are trying and getting so much pleasure from trying and playing with their family makes it so worth it. So although they are not necessarily succeeding at beating Mum and Dad they are able to have fun. It's not a bad game but it's not as good as it could be. I'm not sure that kids who are older than 6 would enjoy the game play but for a 3 or 4 year old and their adult family it is great fun to interact and join in. On the other hand if you can find something to do that helps you all interact without spending £15 then so much the better.

Summary: Nice idea but not as good as it could be.