First 100 numbers shapes bingo is a lovely, well-made shape matching game for toddlers from 2 years old and up. There are a variety of ways to play depending on the ages and the abilities of those involved. It was rigorously tested by my in-house play testers of Maya 4½ and Luca 2½ and was well received and stood up to some fairly boisterous play.
The lovely pictures are based on those of Richard Priddy creator of his “first 100” series of board books and are depicted on the bingo boards and cards in a somewhat chaotic fashion.
Whose a cheeky monkey, then?
This version of the classic “Bingo” game (not to be confused with Bluey’s little sister!) is played by revealing the 26 playing card sized pictures one at a time to the players to see if they have a match and cover the square with a token. These good sized tokens have a picture of a happy, smiling kid on them that quickly got dubbed “cheeky Monkeys” in our house.
These were well loved and easy to handle. The only issue was there are only 40 of them and we’d have liked a few more. The double-sided boards depict a 4x4 array of squares giving a total of 64. We like to carry on playing after the 1st line is full until at least everyone has a line and sometimes go on to fill the whole board. With four players we’d run out of tokens. In fact, without delving too deep into the maths, in a worst case scenario you could need 49 “cheeky monkeys” before someone gets a line at all. Now if the boards have been very cleverly designed
this may not be the case but it would have been a lot easier to give us another sheet of tokens especially as my two “testers” enjoy popping them out as much as anything else.
Numbers, Shapes – and colours and opposites!
The first rule about First 100 numbers shapes bingo game is that first 100 is a brand name and you are not going to get 100 of anything. I didn’t know this and was expecting 100 pictures rather than the 26 we got.
First 100 numbers shapes bingo game is published by Briarpatch the preschool educational games and puzzles division of University Games, specializing in popular children’s literary and TV characters and here uses Richard Priddy’s well-loved pictures.
The issue I have is with the inconsistency of style and that the front of the box bears little resemblance to the contents which are however very well depicted on the back of the box!
There are only 6 numbers in the set 1,2,3,4,5 and 10; no 6,7,8 and 9 and 8 shapes. What we do get is 7 colours and 5 opposites (showing sizes, positions and emotions!)
The cards themselves come in 8 different background colours :- 1 x red, 2 x orange, 2 x brown, 3 x green, 3 x pink, 3 x purple, 4 x blue, 4 x yellow and 4 x white.
A weird distribution and poor old brown doesn’t have a dedicated picture.
In my mind (admittedly possibly over ordered) this could have been better organised but here’s the thing, nobody cared!
Not the little ones, not the grown ups and not even me! It was fun for all and there was lots of different ways you could use the sturdy, colourful components. They were sensibly sized and easy to get out and put away in a decent sized box. And all at a pocket friendly price.
BINGO!
About the author:
Pete Bartlam is a games player slightly older than Gandalf! Whilst still enjoying a deep strategy game himself he is now as likely to be introducing the very young to the joys of boardgames.
