KIDS STUFF: Elefun Review

Is it a game? Or is it a toy?

It’s certainly an elephant.

Elephant fun. Elefun.

Elefun is, as the box tells us, “The frantic butterfly catching game!” Or “El divertido juego de cazar mariposas!”

It’s a big blue plastic hollow elephant that blows air like a confused vacuum cleaner. It takes three big expensive big boy batteries that ARE NOT INCLUDED, and the noise you hear when it’s running in a room is incredible. It’s a mix of an electronic hum and children’s laughter, much like you’d hear in a classroom when a vibrator goes off accidentally in the teacher’s handbag.

Sing along!

Before you play, you need to load tiny butterflies into the elephant’s nose, just the way it happens naturally in the wild. Then every player takes a net, and stands around the elephant’s erect trunk. The elephant gets turned on, and it starts to spit spinning butterflies into the air. Everyone tries to catch the butterflies (or mariposas) in their nets. The winner is the one who has killed more of God’s creatures than anyone else.

My daughter Hope loves Elefun. I know she does, because she likes to say “I’m being serious, we need to play Elefun” all the time. But, to be fair, my daughter is not even three years old yet. She has a lot of screwy opinions on a lot of things.

My girlfriend and I had to play the game with my daughter. We’re the gamers in the family, so really it’s our call on whether Elefun is a good thing or not.

Plus points first:

1. Elefun makes our daughter laugh like crazy. My daughter usually reserves her hysterical laughter for when she sees me hurt myself.

2. Elefun isn’t expensive. We got it for about a tenner. From a supermarket. Ten pounds for a plastic elephant that gets distressed and spews insects isn’t a lot of money in an age when you’d pay a fortune for a roller-skating chimp.

3. It doesn’t last very long.

And now our big fat CONS:

1. You will probably have to play it round the clock, leaving you so physically drained that you never have enough energy to produce another child.

2. Joanne and I get too violent while playing it, and end up assaulting each other. Actually, no, this is a positive one. What am I talking about?

It’s a great game/toy for kids. It’s not brilliant for adults. But you can make it bearable by battering each other.

Let’s leave the last word to Hope: