Briarpatch Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Number Game: Yawn. It's a Puzzle
Written: Mar 19 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: might be good for older children
Cons: the claims for three- and four-year-old play are ridiculous
The Bottom Line: The Bottom Line is that this game is falsely advertised. It neither teaches counting, nor is it much fun for the pre-K set unless they know how to count.
|
|
|
| pippadaisy's Full Review: Briarpatch Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Numb... |
My son, Buster, is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. He eats, sleeps and breathes Thomas, pausing only for a period of playing with his Buzz Lightyear toys. For his birthday, I got him the usual bunch of fun new track pieces and new train cars, but I also wanted to get something, ANYTHING, educational. He's still having trouble with counting and colors, and I thought it might be a good idea to work on identifying numbers, so when I spotted the Briarpatch Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Number Game on the Creative Trains web site as I was shopping for engines, I thought it would be a sure winner.
::: Some Annoyance Required :::
The Briarpatch Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Number Game comes with four playing boards, 24 number pieces, and a spinner. It sounds fairly basic until you open the box and realize you are going to have to punch out some pieces before the game can begin. The four boards (one each of Thomas, Percy, James, and Mavis, the token female train) are train-shaped, and have to be punched out of the board, as do some of the number pieces that are inside the train cars the engines are pulling. An additional board of number pieces is also included, which need to be punched out, and even the square-shaped spinner needs to be punched out. The spinner itself is compromised of the cardboard piece and two plastic pieces that have to be snapped together, and while the games boards, number pieces, and spinner are a nice, sturdy board, the plastic for the spinner is cheap and thin, and was already bent when we opened the box.
Game rules include three variations, all of which require no reading (however, for two of them, you need math skills!). The game is advertised for ages 3 to 7, and from 1 to 4 players. The "Preschoolers Game" for ages 3 to 4 doesn't use the spinner. All you have to do is have each player grab a game board, put in pieces that fit, and when everyone's train is completed, everyone wins.
The "Adding Game" for ages 5 to 7 uses the spinner, which denotes which number piece you can choose (number 1 through 5, each a different proportional size). Depending on what you spin, you can add that piece to your train, obviously leading to a point where you can only spin one number to win. The first person to complete the train wins.
The "Advanced Game" for ages 7 and up allegedly works on subtraction skills, by allowing players to also REMOVE pieces to get the correct total.
::: Snore, Snore, Bore :::
My five-year-old daughter Beanie, is ready for the adding game, but Buster, who is still learning his numbers, is nowhere near. When we first opened the game, I sat down with Buster to begin "play" and realized we really weren't doing anything but assembling train puzzles, and not very interesting ones at that. I suppose you can use the number pieces to teach numbers 1 through 5, but that doesn't get very far, and since he's not even close to being ready to work on math skills, both of us were bored silly with the game.
Beanie is more interested in figuring out what pieces will add up to the number on the back of the train, but the game was Buster's gift, so he expects that if anyone is playing with it, HE's the one playing with it, but he doesn't understand the spinner or the concept.
The long and short of it is that this game is an exercise in frustration for just about everyone involved. Had they advertised the game as being appropriate for ages 5 and up and skipped the "everybody wins if we just put puzzles together" angle, and I'd gotten this game for him two years from now, I might not have been as disappointed, but all I've done for two weeks now is pick up the little pieces off the floor and put them back in the box after Buster dumps the whole thing, gets bored, and walks off. The Briarpatch Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends Number Game really should be ashamed for the false claims that this teaches "counting" because I can think of 100 other fun ways to work on numbers and counting other than this.
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
Other Thomas-related reviews:
Chinese Dragon • Dazy Sure Track • Ivo Hugh with Zoo Cars • Lifting Bridge • Mavis • Nilo Multi-Use Storage Bench • Nilo Multi-Use Train Table • Schylling Thomas & Friends Tin Drum • Sir Topham Hatt & Lady Topham Hatt • Spencer
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 16.09
Type of Toy: Game
Age Range of Child: Other
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
pippadaisy
|
 - Top 50 |
|
Reviews written: 1086
Trusted by: 177 members
About Me:
Divorce seriously cuts into the amount of time for reviewing.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.