I'm a T-rex, RRRRRROOOOOOOAAAAAAARR RRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!! ! (Dinosaur Snap)

Member Name: mumto3

Product:	Dinosaur Snap
Date:	13/04/09 (212 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice idea for dinosaur fans - educational

Disadvantages: Specified age limit is a bit too low - bigger brighter cards would be more fun

My son who is 3 and a half years old is dinosaur mad! I'm not sure where this fascination came from or why he finds them so amazing but he can't get enough dinosaur stuff.

Shortly before Christmas I was looking for stocking fillers and ideas on www.amazon.co.uk, I had searched under 'dinosaur' and was browsing through the search results when I found these dinosaur snap cards. They are aimed at children aged five and over and at that time my son was only just three but I felt that he would like them because of the dinosaur pictures. He likes to 'read' the dinosaur encyclopaedia at the library so I wasn't too worried about the specified minimum age.

My son was very excited to receive these snap cards in his stocking on Christmas morning simply because of the dinosaur theme. He hadn't quite grasped the basics of snap at that time so his excitement was purely based on the theme rather than the content of the toy.

In the pack you get 52 playing cards and three cards explaining the rules for snap and pairs. The cards are the same size, weight and thickness as a normal adult set of playing cards. I would have preferred the cards to be slightly bigger and maybe a little thicker to make them easier to hold and separate for younger children.

The cards can be split into four subjects, bodies, skeletons, names and diet. In the bodies section the cards feature a colour picture of the dinosaur and the name is written underneath in small black letters. In the skeleton section the cards feature a picture of the dinosaur skeleton in the same pose as the bodies' card. The name of each dinosaur is written on the relevant card. In the names section the name of each dinosaur is written in big green letters in the centre of the card. At the bottom of the card the name is broken down into syllables to show how to pronounce each name. For an example the card may say Stegosaurus - STEG - oh - SORE - us. The diet section has Meat-eater, Plant-eater and Meat and Plant-eater written in large letters in the centre of the card. In small black letters is Carnivore, Herbivore or Omnivore depending on the specific diet mentioned on each card.

To play snap you must match either a body and a skeleton or a name and a diet or a body and a diet and so on. There is one card that simply says SNAP on it and this can be matched to any other card. I had expected the cards just to feature dinosaurs and skeletons and felt that at his age and his level of interest in dinosaurs my son would be more than able to cope with this. Unfortunately my son cannot read words like Euoplocephalus or Parasaurolophus and to be honest I struggle too so unfortunately this did make playing the game a little difficult. I had to keep reading the cards to see if the word matched the dinosaur or the diet matched the skeleton and it made it very long winded and a bit boring for my three and five year old children who just wanted to yell SNAP! as loudly and as often as possible. Because of these issues with the game we have not yet played the Pairs game and have not played snap since that first time.

On the back of the thee rules cards you do get self-checking guides telling which skeletons match and which dinosaurs ate which type of food but to keep checking is time consuming. I had never heard of some of the dinosaurs featured, like those I mentioned previously, and so I wasn't familiar with their look or eating habits like you would be with more widely known dinosaurs like a T-rex or Diplodocus.

If the cards had featured just pictures I think it would have made a much better game. We eventually took out all the cards with just words on them and just looked for pictures but as you only get 13 different dinosaur pictures and 13 skeletons this made for quite a short game.

I would say that the game should be aimed at a child of about 7 or maybe 8 because my five year old daughter wasn't able to read the different dinosaur names. I think a child of five would probably be able to read meat or plant eater but by the time they may have had to spell out each letter the other players are becoming bored and frustrated.

On the whole I think it is a nice idea for any dinosaur fans but I would say it is better suited to an older child unless you do take out the word cards.

Summary: A nice game but a bit too advanced for the specified age range