Jungle Speed is a new game that combines fast pace card games like Spot It and Blink with an extra twist, a “totem” that you have to physically grab to win the mini-round.

Game play is pretty simple though it does take a few readings of the directions while playing to figure things out. As usual, dads with short fuses should read the directions ahead of time instead of yelling at the kids for jumping ahead.

Cards are divided into even piles for up to 10 players. Each player turns over the top card on their stack one player at a time. If the card matches the shape of another already turned up card of any other player, one of the two players has to grab the totem (a yellow plastic column) before the other person. The loser has to take the winner’s cards. The objective is to run out of cards. There are other cards that do variations of this, or that change the matching to color, but the game is easy to understand after a few run-throughs.

We had a lot of fun playing this game among two kids and a dad. My youngest, age 7, squealed with excitement when someone made a mistake or missed the match completely. We all wanted to play the game again, which is alway a good sign in a house with a few too many group games to play.

I’d recommend Jungle Speed for kids 6 and up, as well as dads who like a fast-paced game that requires sharp eyes and fast hands. This game is another winner that only take 15-20 minutes to play, after which dad can bow out gracefully if he needs a break, leaving the Round 2 to the kids.

GreatDad.com Review Policy: The featured product for this review was provided to us, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. We do not accept monetary compensation for reviewing or writing about products. We only review products that we have personally tested and used in our own homes, and all opinions expressed are our own.

Gas up the wagon and drive to a shady picnic table where the whole family can play Road Trip, a new game from Daddy-O Productions. Packaged in a playful tin box, this is a fun game for kids 7 and up and their parents.

You don’t have to be on the road to play Road Trip. If fact, this is not a game for the car. However, I brought it along on a family weekend and we enjoyed the game over a rest stop lunch. The game is simple. Each player is trying to move a little colored car across the United States from West to East Coast. Players advance by attempting “challenges” that test their vocabulary and imagination. Players fill in statements like the following after rolling a multi-faceted die to choose a letter: “After dinner, we took a (NOUN), to help us (VERB) before we went to the (PLACE). This is easy if you draw an S, but more difficult with a Q or X. Other questions require players to list things (ex. three parts of a car) that begin with the chosen letter. A very short egg timer keeps the game moving at a breakneck speed.

We all had a lot of laughs playing this game, especially my 7 year old who loved the idea of sticking funny words in as nouns and verbs and still making the sentences work, a bit like MadLibs. My wife, stuck on some word combo beginning with “S” blurted out a swear word which had the kids howling. I had to laugh as well; just glad that it hadn’t been my 11 year old who said it.

There are improvements I’d like to see with this game. The die always seemed to land on K, at least when I had it and we all felt it was oddly weighted (Note: the game’s maker says this is due to unavoidable manufacturing inconsistencies with a multisided die of this type). The Challenge cards also only have two themes (the sentence and the list), which get a bit old with multiple plays. The tin case is a fun novelty and jumps off the shelf but it does make for awkward stacking on the game shelf. It’s a small thing, but important to the guy who is always nagging at kids or picking up toys before mom gets home to yell about the mess!

Road Trip is a fun game for readers of all ages, and a fun game for lazy summer days when you can’t jump in the camper and head out on the open road.

GreatDad.com Review Policy: The featured product for this review was provided to us, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. We do not accept monetary compensation for reviewing or writing about products. We only review products that we have personally tested and used in our own homes, and all opinions expressed are our own.

For dads and kids who like words, Dabble is a fun, and speedy alternative to Scrabble. You can play in just five minutes, which is perfect for time-frazzled dads and attention-challenged kids and teens.

We like games like this that are simple and direct. No directions here with tons of exceptions and twists and turns. The rules of the road are simple. You get 20 Scrabble-like tiles and the objective is to make five words out of them: one with 2 letters, one with 3 letters, one with 4, one with 5 and one with 6 letters. It’s both not as hard and harder than you would imagine. My kids right away figured out that the best strategy is to do the long words first and work your way down. Inevitably, you run out of vowels or consonants though as you get closer to the end.

If after three minutes, there is no winner, as in Scrabble, you throw back letters you think have been challenging and hope for better substitutes. But do you throw back just one or ten? The second round obviously moves a lot faster since most players are only looking to finish one or two words.

If the game gets too simple, you can dial it up a notch for all or some of the players by limiting the categories from which players can draw words. Maybe mom and dad can only use verbs, or household items while Junior can use the whole dictionary, foreign words and proper nouns to even the playing field.

The game is for players 10 or older. My 7 year old had more patience with the game than my 11 year old, who got very frustrated when dad won two games in quick succession. My 7 year old made a lot of words, but most of them were misspelled (“phork?”).

And you know what else I like? Dabble comes in a simple rectangular box with a cover that goes on snugly and keeps everything inside. There is one wasted piece of cardboard, but they didn’t throw in a lot of paper to make it a bigger package. The instructions could have been printed on the inside of the box, like the old MB games, but you can’t have everything. Then again, as I said, the instructions here aren’t the complicated.

I’m holding onto Dabble for when my daughter is a few years older. She’s good with words and spelling and I’m sure she’ll be able to beat me in no time.

$24.99 at Amazon.

Imagine the scene: A warm Spring evening. Good French wine and an authentic steak-frites. Talk of Edith Wharton, Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway. Are we in Paris? No, I’m with my 7 and 11 year old son and daughter in a local restaurant and we’re playing a new card game,
Notable Novelists of the 20th Century while waiting for dessert.

For a book lover who would be pleased to have his kids grow up scanning the New York Review, this was heaven; my son carefully trying to pronounce “Hemingway” and my daughter asking if I have a F. Scott Fitzgerald author card. I have to say I was strangely proud as fellow diners listened to my kids’ recitation of a pantheon of literary greats of the last century.

The game isn’t as intellectual as the authors it salutes, however. It can be played by anyone who can, or almost, can read. All it requires is being able to organize cards into sets containing a bio card, an author card, and a library card for each author. And that’s the genius actually. Adults wouldn’t have the interest to play a game this simple – basically a literary version of Go Fish, but kids like these games and will soak up facts and titles as they play. The cards themselves have old New Yorker-style graphics and some basic and some esoteric facts about the authors, which will also entertain adult players. But the best part is feeling that your kids might actually grow up to read the same books that formed us as we grew up.

Playing this game was a fun and nostalgic way to close out another good evening with my kids.

Notable Novelists – $10.99 on Amazon. Makes a good gift for the book-loving dad too.

My 5 year old son bought a version of these magnets “with his own money” at the SFMOMA two years ago and they were a hit at our house. Evidently, the ones we bought, Bucky Balls, weren’t in any way protected and the 2011 New York Toy Fair was filled with versions of them including a major display of NanoDots.

As with Lego displays, they even showed how you could create huge magnetic sculptures:

Here is a fun video for NeoCube that shows just how tactily addictive these little magnets are. They come in packs of 216 magnet balls for about $30. It’s a fairly high price for a small package, but guaranteed to keep little or big hands busy.

I spoke with a NanoDots representative about whether the little magnets could ruin credit card, phones, or even computer hard drives, and he confidently stuck his phone and a credit card on the little magnets to show how well protected modern devices are from magnetic forces. Good to know.

NOTE: GreatDad did not receive samples of this product for review.

My son bought a version of these magnets “with his own money” at the SFMOMA two years ago and they were a hit at our house. Evidently, the ones we bought, Bucky Balls, weren’t in any way protected and the 2011 New York Toy Fair was filled with versions of them including a major display of NanoDots.

My kids are 7 and 11, so finding games that both will play is already a trick. But finding a game that I find fun is also a challenge. We’ve been trying fast-paced card games and have found a few to recommend.

This genre I believe, is relatively recent. These card games requires the ability to read symbols or do simple addition at a fast pace while slamming cards down. Each new card changes the problem to be solved, and while none of the challenges are very hard, it is hard to solve one after another in quick succession to win the game.

Here are the games that we have tried.

1. Blink (Mattel) – This was the first game of this type we had ever seen and has been a favorite of ours over many airplane trips. Made by the makers of UNO (now Mattel), Blink is marketed as the “World’s Fastest Game.” Each of the 60 cards has one to four symbols in four different colors. The objective is to put down cards as quickly as possible that match symbol, number or color. The game moves very fast and takes probably under 90 seconds to play. It’s perfect for playing while waiting for a plane to take off or when you need something to fill in a short amount of time. It will challenge both young and old and, like the other games, it’s always interesting, though you may not always have the energy for it.

Ages 6+; for two players

2.  7 ATE 9 (Out of the Box)- 7 ATE 9 requires quick addition and subtraction as player try to do simple math on a card to find the two numbers they need to match with cards in their own hands. The math is simple (ex. 5 an 3), but players need to either subtract or multiply to solve for the number they need to match (in this case, cards with either 8 or 2 would be a match). Game play is swift, but we found without a lot of humor.

Ages 8+; for 2-4 players

3. Spot it! (Blue Orange) – The genius of this game is in the design of its 55 cards. Each card has eight cartoon-like, but common symbols (ex. bonfire, candle, apple, snowflake), but two cards have only one symbol in common. In all variations of the game, players are trying to frantically find matching symbols. It sounds simple but it is devilishly hard, and maybe harder because symbols are often larger on one card than on another. This is a game that is often won by either the very old or very young and can be played many times without getting bored. And it’s great in a situation when you want to play with non-readers or non-English-speakers. This was our favorite game of the those we looked at.

Ages 6+; for 2-8 players

4. Super Circles (Out of the Box) – Super Circles uses a different system to challenge the brain. In this case, the players try to match up colored circles that also have identical numbers to create a match. This game can also be exciting since a “4″ can be red on one card and yellow on another. Players also get lost staring into the brightly-colored concentric circles on the cards.

Ages 7+, for 2-4 players

5. Spud (Fat Brain Toys) – Unlike the other games, this one is played with two sets of cards: cards that show how many potatoes you have and direction cards that tell you what to do with the potatoes. Again, the orientation is on moving fast, but here you are reacting to what is written to do on the cards, all of which involves moving your different types of potatoes around the board. Your potatoes are individual with one or more potato types, including baked and fries. Cards say, “Move left” and you just throw your potato to the person to your left. The objective is to move as fast as you can and never end up with five potatoes in front of you. Game speed is fast and spuds are going all over, which, for better or worse, can bring out the silly in some kids and dads.

Ages 6+, 2-4 players

All of these games require a certain amount of honesty among all players since mistakes and cheating are al but impossible to detect. They are all perfect for travel and all are available in travel tins (except Spud, which comes in a mini potato sack). MSRP in almost all cases is right around ten bucks, with some significantly lower prices on Amazon.

GreatDad.com Review Policy: Some of the products for this review were provided to us, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. We do not accept monetary compensation for reviewing or writing about products. We only review products that we have personally tested and used in our own homes, and all opinions expressed are our own.

Uses laser technology in a game tower to enhance the game and add new features.

One key thing all dads (and moms) should be looking at when choosing a new toy is whether dad is going to have fun with it too. Quite often this aspect is overlooked and the new toy that was meant to give so much joy becomes a source of conflict or frustration between a child who wants to spend more time with dad, and the father who can’t imagine playing “just one more game.” Here are some toys and games I’ve played with over the past year with my son who is now six years old, but would be good for kids 5+, including readers.

Citiblocs. – We’ve reviewed these simple pine blocks before. Because they are thin, you can use them to create all kinds of different structures, doubling or tripling up as needed. Dads can re-find the fun of construction. Sometimes, simple is just better.

Little Magicians from Haba – This memory game is surprisingly trick for adults because it includes a mechanism for changing up the simple clues we use to remember where things are (upper right, below the mark). The game is also only 15 minutes long even if everyone has a bad memory so dads aren’t locked into an evening of game play.

Lego – what dad-friendly toy list would be complete without a Lego. In this case, many six year olds can start to follow the directions by themselves, but construction can be more fun with two. I prefer things that when built, stay built. It’s frustrating for both child and dad to spend two hours building something to see it collapse in rubble within a day. Sometimes, kids want to break them down, but often times, the engineering just isn’t there to hold the toy together without some crazy glue. Lego also has a new set of games which require building the game board. Check out Harry Potter Hogwarts game, for example, which can be played without knowing how to read. We also like Lego Creationary, a Lego version of Pictionary, where a player builds what he sees on a card while other compete to guess what it is.

Perplexus – We love the new Perplexus, a new toy that takes the old Brio Labyrinth to the third dimension. Perplexus is a clear plastic globe, with a labyrinth inside. It requires turning the 1 foot in circumference ball over and over to move the ball through a series of maze boundaries and obstacles. Perfect for developing space and motion skills in a six year-old or 40 year-old, this is a toy you and your kids will fight over. Blissfully, turns are very short since it’s hard to keep the ball in play before it falls off a ledge. That doesn’t mean that it’s too hard to be fun. Each challenge is eventually easy to overcome and the player keeps on learning the trips and traps until eventual success.

We love magic for little kids because they feel like it’s their own special world and secret. And when you and your child are the only ones who know how you did it, it makes you feel closer. There are a lot of tricks that are easy to do that adults can’t figure out, and even more that are obvious for adults but mystifying to other kids. We like this set of magic from Melissa and Doug because it’s constructed out of wood rather than plastic and has tricks that don’t take a lot of dexterity to do well. Melissa & Doug Discovery Magic Set $11.99 at Amazon.

Your kids will love Loopz, even if you can’t stand to have it in the same room. Loopz is one of those sound memory games that comes out every holiday season, and I’m sure will be a big hit this year. At $30, it’s a little pricey, but still affordable and your kids will likely get their (or your) money’s worth. Like a lot of games in this genre, Loopz uses colored lights and robotic sounds and tones in patterns that players must memorize. Again, like many of these games, Loopz can be played by one player with the game providing patterns the player must imitate. Or, ideally two players build a pattern of sounds with each turn, which must then be imitated, and built upon, by the next player. Unlike other games, however, Loopz new twist is that players move their hands in between the loops to choose the color/tone, rather hitting a button.

Dads will find this interesting for five or ten minutes, but failing middle-aged memories will hamper their success rate and they will quickly tire of competing against more intellectually agile children. The noise of the Loopz is only entertaining if you’re playing it; otherwise the sounds emanating from the Loopz seem to only translate into “throw me against the wall so I never make these sounds again.” Prescient fathers will suggest that the Loopz only be played behind closed door since the game can only be played if the plastic toy is in one piece.

The game is rated for seven and up, but it’s my six year-old boy who enjoys it the most in our family.

We love the new Perplexus, a new toy from Plasmart that takes the old Brio Labyrinth to the third dimension. Perplexus is a clear plastic globe, with a labyrinth inside. It requires turning the 1 foot in circumference ball over and over to move the ball through a series of maze boundaries and obstacles. Perfect for developing space and motion skills in a six year-old or 40 year-old, this is a toy you and your kids will fight over. Blissfully, turns are very short since it’s hard to keep the ball in play before it falls off a ledge. That doesn’t mean that it’s too hard to be fun. Each challenge is eventually easy to overcome and the player keeps on learning the trips and traps until eventual success. This toy is a winner!

We had a chance to meet the inventor, a sculptor/designer, who crafted the entire game by hand. He even had “life-size” four foot tall version to show us, and lovingly explained each challenge in building a one-of-a-kind toy like this. We also talked to Plasmart’s President, Tim Kimber, who also launched the PlasmaCar, a favorite of ours from two years back. We liked the Plasma Car when we first saw it at ABC Kids Show, and I think we can count on Plasmart for a lot of innovative toys in the future.

$24.99 for one or get the two-pack!

GreatDad.com Review Policy: The featured product for this review was provided to us, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. We do not accept monetary compensation for reviewing or writing about products. We only review products that we have personally tested and used in our own homes, and all opinions expressed are our own.