Hasbro Elefun - The Butterfly Catchin' Game Review

My nephew got Elefun for his birthday this year and we opened it up right away.  Although the game says it's for 3-5 (or was it 4-6?), my 2 year old nephew loved it!  Granted, he was on a sugar high from the cake and ice cream, but even so he had a lot of fun with it.

Elefun is a Butterfly Catching Game.  Basically, the elephant sticks his trunk up in the air, and you turn on a little fan that blows the butterflies out the top.  The butterflies are made of little paper/plasticy things that sort of float down.  The goal is for kids to catch as many as they can!  It's meant to be played with others, but my nephew is perfectly fine just playing it himself.

The first few times he played, we had to keep telling him to get closer.  He doesn't really have the hand-eye coordination yet, but why not give him a head start on learning this?  But even when he didn't catch any at all (which was most every time in the beginning) he still wanted to play over and over.  We helped him catch some and the funny thing was, he'd just dump them right out and want to play again.  He didn't even care how many he caught, it was just fun for him to have the butterflies falling around him.

My nephew is a future engineer (both his parents are) and always explores things.  The last time we broke this out, he wasn't even interested in putting the trunk on.  He just enjoyed putting a few butterflies in the elephant, then turning it on so they would blow right out.  The fan is covered very safely so it would be hard for even his little fingers to get to it.  Even so, we still always make sure to be around when he's playing this because it is technically for older children.  

The problems with this game are as follows.  First, it's like a 10-20 second game.  The butterflies just all come out then it's over.  We did learn that if we pinch the trunk in various places, it slows them down and makes it last longer.  Second, there is cleanup involved, which I'm not too fond of.  Of course we have our nephew help put the butterflies back in, but often he was just ready to go go go and didn't want to wait.  Be prepared to get on the floor every time it's over to put them back in.  Finally, there aren't really a whole lot of butterflies.  The person who gave this to him put pieces of colored tissue paper to make it seem like more came out, but those tissue papers slowly get crumbled overtime.  It's still a good idea though if you want to stretch out the life of the game.  

Overall: My nephew enjoys the game, so therefore I gotta recommend it.  It just goes to show you that the age range on products isn't always a strict guideline.  He's 2-3 years younger than the recommended age but he still has fun with it.