Customer Reviews

Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed Game

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I got this game for my 3 year old..she is just a little too young to play it correctly..all she wanted to do it put the monkeys on the bed & push the bed button until they popped off. Another year & I know she'll love it as intended. I would definitely buy this as a gift for the 4-8 year old range. Very cute & original.

My daughter has been thrilled with this game. It works together well with the rhyme she's almost obsessed with. Takes a while for someone to win, but keeps the kids entertained the whole time. My daughter just laughs and laughs when the monkeys fall off the bed. Even her grandpa played this game with her and enjoyed it. The best thing is that it has very simple rules that she doesn't mind following and bright colors.

I bought this game for the age range child it is designed for - but - it becomes very boring. The tokens you collect become repetitive - pretend to get ready for bed, brush your teeth, put your pj's on, etc. It's all good until you do it for the 10th time and they get thoroughly bored. The monkeys jumping off the bed is the only part they like and they usually get frustrated because it takes too long and just push the button until the bed "jumps" and bounces the monkeys off. I just think it's a lot of money for a game like this when, for the same amount, you can find something much more fun and interesting - even for those who cannot read. It "looks" like it will be fun - but in reality - it becomes boring very quickly.

I'm sort of a board game nerd. I have a closet with stacks and stacks of board games for all occasions - party games, games for "nongamers," obscure games, classics...etc. So, naturally, my wife and I started up a collection of children's board games as soon as our daughter could speak! She now has about ten games in her own closet collection. Some are simple, some kinda dumb, but none are quite so terrible as Five Little Monkeys. It's just astonishing how bad this game is, and its many baffling design decisions are made even worse with a child at the lower end of the recommended age scale. I would advise all parents to stay away from this trash, but ESPECIALLY those of you who, like me, have a very young gamer-in-training.

Where to begin? How about the board design and its effect on the game objectives. The game requires the completion of two conditions for a win: you must have collected four separate tokens and placed four plastic monkeys on top of the large bed in the center of the board. You accomplish this by spinning a dial on a cardboard wheel and advancing 1-6 spaces along a rectangular track, landing on either an image featuring one of the four tokens or a "monkey space" which allows you to place 1-3 monkeys on the bed. There are a couple of issues here - the board is designed in such a way that, with one or two exceptions, you will always land on the same space every time you spin a '5.' In other words, if you just collected the "teeth brushing" token, spinning a '5' on your next turn will bring you to the next "teeth brushing" token on the board. If you spin another 5 on the following turn, the same thing will happen...and so on and so forth. This doesn't sound like too big of a problem, until someone spins '5' four times in a row, effectively missing three consecutive turns, as advancement in and of itself doesn't really achieve much.

This is further compounded by the fact that monkeys can be knocked off the bed, in a manner similar to some other classic games. At the end of each player's turn, that player must press a button on the bed, and every few turns the mattress will bounce up, knocking a few monkeys back off the bed. This can be very frustrating under the right conditions, and can greatly extend the length of the game if it manages to keep victory out of reach that much longer for all players. It gets worse the more players you add to the game (up to a maximum of 4). It isn't much fun for anyone when a player spins 5 a couple of times in a row and then proceeds to knock all of his or her own monkeys off the bed (happens more often than you might think).

Perhaps the worst part of the game for younger players is keeping them on track throughout their turn. Most games for very young children are set up so that a turn has two steps...three at most. Generally speaking, you roll something or spin something, and then either move your piece and react to that movement or simply react to the result of the spin/roll. In Five Little Monkeys, the child must spin the wheel, move the monkey, place monkeys on the bed OR collect a token, press the button on the bed, and then collect any of their own monkeys that have fallen if the bed sprang up this turn.

We've had this game for several months now and I have grown to loathe it. I try to keep it hidden behind the other games, and I shudder when it is selected. The designs made a huge error by basically combining two games - one in which the player collects tokens, and another in which the player is trying to get monkeys on the bed. Multiple objectives help make many adult games more interesting and fun to play, but for a young child's game? No. Bad idea. HORRIBLE idea. Throw in a poorly designed board and you have one heck of a stinker. AVOID, fellow parents. Save yourself from this mess!

My 5 year daughter old asked for this for Xmas and she was excited to get it.
It was fun to play a few times, but she has lost interst in it really quick. She still likes to play with Candyland and Operation, and chooses them over this every time..

Our [...] received this and I agree, it's a bit much for a [...]. I assume that rating is based on safety only. Our [...] is entertained by the activities, but there are too many steps and rules, and it is too long for the average 3 year old. However, it's an adorable game that would be great for the 4-6 year old set, and we can't wait to pull it out of the closet later this year, when I'm sure she will love it.

My daughter who is 4 and 1/2 enjoys the game. Not sure of the educational value of the game, there is a little counting but that is about it. We still play the game a couple of times a week and it has held up well. I would definitely recommend it for younger children but think my daughter maybe on the upper end of the age group.

I played this with my 5yr old who kind of liked it. I did not, it was boring; there was no point. Just step around the board, collect tokens, put monkeys on the bed, a moment of anxiety, press the red button, and... nothing, or maybe the bed shakes a little and a monkey falls off. Anyway, I was annoyed enough at this game to write this review.

I bought this for my nephew's xmas gift and he loved it!
it is a great game for children and they really enjoy playing with it all day long.

Ugh - this thing is a major disappointment. My son LOVES the Five Little Monkey books, so we thought this would be a great choice as a Christmas gift. So last Christmas (2009) we gave it to him. He was excited and couldn't wait to play it. As others have said - especially the reviewer Matthew, it instructions to play are really poorly thought out for the age range. And since there are so few choices of what one must do (get ready for bed or brush your teeth, etc), it's incredibly boring, incredibly quickly. How many times can a kid have to pantomime the same action? By the second time (or maybe third if you have a tolerant kid), they don't want to bother anymore. As so many others have said, the only fun part of this entire game is getting the monkeys on the bed, pushing the button down, and waiting for them to all pop off. In over a year, my son has attempted to play this normally TWICE only. Now it's not even an option - and I cannot blame him. It's awful. So the only way he plays this is we each choose a color of monkey, pile them in various spaces on the bed, press the button until they pop, and whoever has more monkeys still standing, wins.

Idiotic. I would absolutely NOT waste my money on this - even if you found it for $1 at a yard sale, I'd not bother.