Review & Giveaway: ThinkFun Games

My family recently had the chance to play some of the wonderful games from the ThinkFun family!


ThinkFun is a great company known for it's challenging games meant to stimulate kids' (and adults'!) minds. The very first puzzle they created was called Spin-Out, back in 1985. Over the years they've won tons of awards, from the Parents Choice Silver Awars in 2008 for Ducks In A Row, to Zingo! making the ASTRA Best Toys for Kids List in 2008.

We got to review three games: Rush Hour, S'Match, and Hoppers Jr.

Rush Hour is a single player puzzle game. Basically, there are assorted puzzle "challenge" cards, and your goal is to get the trucks and cars out of the path of your player car. The cards kind of vary in how hard the challenge is. What I liked is it comes with a nifty little travel carrying soft case, so not only can you keep the pieces together in your toy room (weeeellll, in a perfect world, anyways) it's easy to bring along and play anywhere you have a flat surface - even on a plane. You'll see in the picture that the cards fit on a little pull out try so the player can reference it easily.


S'Match is a silly matching memory matching game. This one's a little different in that it's a matching game, using colors, numbers, or category. And to add it to the mix, there's a fun spinner that changes everything up. The cards are large and easy to read, and because you can go by things other than the words, even though the game is 4 and up, 3 year old can play along too with a bit of help from Mom or Dad. This one's a good, fun learning game.


Our personal favorite of the bunch was Hoppers Jr. It's a peg solitaire style single player game, like Rush Hour in a way, but it uses frogs! The goal of the game is to hop around the board over the green frogs into an empty space being the last frog standing. It has 40 different card challenges as well, also ranging from easy to really hard. This one also has a nice little carry bag for the cards and froggies.



All of the games I've reviewed up above retail from $17.99 to $19.99. If you're curious to try the game before you buy, a lot of the games have an option to play game (Play Me) on the product pages. You can also sign up for special offers emails, and they have teacher specials too! You can purchase online, at small speciality stores, or even many Barnes and Noble locations. (Local peeps: Naturium inside the Kitsap mall carries a few of their games) If you'd like to purchase online, use promo code CONFESS2009Q3 now through August 17th to save 10% off your purchase!

Win it! Four lucky winners are going to win games from Think Fun! I get to give away

TWO Rush Hour games (ages 8 to adult)

and

TWO S'Match games (ages 4 and up)

To enter: Visit ThinkFun and tell me what other game besides the ones mentioned in my review that you think would be a hit with your family. I also want to know which game you'd like to win!

(Please answer BOTH parts of my question. Every giveaway, folks are being disqualified because they aren't reading my post!)

As always, you can receive extra entries for:
-Subscribing to my feed or following my blog
-Blogging about this giveaway with a link back
-Tweeting about this giveaway (leave the link or @psychotichouse me)
-Add my blog to your Technorati favs (leave your username)

Contest ends August 15th at 11:59 PM PST. US only, sorry. :( Good luck! :)