Angry Birds: On Thin Ice Game

This toy is a lot of fun. Children young and old are quite familiar with Angry Birds on their smartphone, tablet, or whatever else. This is a great way to have your kids take a break from the technology and actually interact and play with their hands, instead of just their fingertips on a screen.

The concept is relatively simple of pulling cards of different set-ups to build and then launching the Angry Birds at the structure.

Parents might need to step-in to help little kiddos assemble the structures or provide some guidance on how to work the catapult. Assembling the structure exactly to the picture on the cards takes some doing, but it's not impossible. It's pretty difficult to hit anything with the catapult, but it's fun to try and try again. If you're actually trying to win, it might be good to bend the rules to allow enough tries to hit something, particularly if you have young children. For us, we take turns building it, while the other keeps trying until it gets knocked down. Simple.

Review By

G. Morishige

Angry Birds: Knock On Wood Game

I think the concept of this toy is really fun, and my kids certainly enjoy it although you need to be prepared to search around for scattered pieces if you don't have a restricted area for shooting the birds. I find shooting toward a rug or on a table with a tablecloth keeps them from ricocheting all over the room.
First, the good stuff:
PROS: The rules are simple, easy to explain to younger children, and you don't have to know how to read to figure things out, so that's also great for little ones.
The birds, pigs, catapult, and the structure pieces all seem pretty sturdy. Plus my five year old likes to just play with the game pieces as action figures. We only got this game because he wanted some plastic Angry Birds to play with and this was the only thing we found that fit the bill.
The game builds coordination and (hopefully) a little patience in the best case scenario. But that leads me to the cons...
CONS: This is more a downfall for folks like me who can't stand tedious projects :) but I get a little frustrated trying to build the structures shown on the level cards sometimes. They are supposed to be grouped according to difficulty, but some of the Level 1( ie: allegedly easier) structures are just as difficult as the Level 2 and 3 ones. There are some I think might be impossible to build at all based on the law of gravity, although my husband disagrees and says with enough balance they're all possible.
I'm kind of a fumble-prone mom and I spent more time knocking down half-built structures with my clumsy hands than with birds at first. If you have a child who doesn't have much tolerance for slow, meticulous projects then he/she might be annoyed trying to build the structures.
As far as the actual shooting the birds part of the game, that takes some getting used to and is actually a lot harder than on the Iphone app. in my opinion. That said, it is doable. My five year old and eight year old are fans of the game and have already played with it a lot. One tip: make sure you keep up with all the pieces because losing even one or two of the logs or blocks will seriously hamper your ability to complete the structures on the cards.

Review By S. Goodman

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