Review: UNO MOO!

I can remember learning to play UNO as a kid. And playing it often – most commonly after dance class while my friend and I were waiting for her mom (the dance teacher) to finish teaching her other classes. We played UNO for hours back then. I also played with my own mom and brother quite often as well – it was always one of our favorite games.

Now that my girls are right into game-playing age, we’ve started introducing them to a lot of our favorites. My older girls already know how to play traditional UNO, but my poor 3-year-old seems to often get left out of the game, because she just isn’t quite old enough to get the concepts yet – even though she thinks she does. So I was incredibly happy to see that Mattel has introduced a preschool version of UNO – called UNO MOO!.

What it is:

UNO MOO! takes the basic concepts of the regular game of UNO and simplifies them so that younger kids can understand – without having to deal with holding and keeping track of playing cards. Instead, UNO MOO uses plastic figurines shaped like farm animals that can be matched either by color or type as the game is played.  From the Mattel website:

Gotta get the critters back in the barn! Round ‘em up by matching colors or animals. Is there a blue pig on the roof? Pair it with any blue animal or any color pig. Or use a farmer figure — he’s wild and matches anything. The first player to get all their figures back in the barn wins the game!

• Helps preschoolers learn about colors and matching
• Includes 28 animal and farmer figures
• Plus, one Play-and-Store Barn and four haystack partitions
• Adorable and portable!
• Great for ages 3+

Courtesy of Mattel and their PR division, we received a copy of the UNO MOO! game to try out and review.

Here’s my our take on it:

I’d been seeing the commercials for this game for a few weeks now and it was the one thing that I absolutely knew I wanted to get my preschooler this year for Christmas. So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to try it out even beforehand – and it’s definitely gone over very well in our house. Whomever designed this game did so with families in mind – just the fact that all of the game pieces store in the plastic barn is huge. I don’t know how many games we’ve had to find new homes for after their cardboard box homes have been crushed or otherwise ruined. This one is all self-contained and that’s perfect. Plus, all of the stickers come pre-applied to the game pieces and there’s nothing to separate or punch out. When you’ve got anxious, impatient kids who just want to start playing, it’s always a pain to have to spend 20 minutes putting everything together. With this game, we were simply able to start playing, right out of the box.

The premise of the game is actually very similar to regular UNO, except that you’re matching the animal that’s sitting on the open barn door – and when you have a match, instead of just placing a card down on a pile, you push the previous animal into the barn and set your new one down on the door for the next player to try and match.  You can match either by the animal’s color, or whether it’ a pig, cow, sheep, etc. There are also two ‘special’ kinds of pieces – the farmer (who is ‘wild’) and the skunk (who acts like a ‘Draw 2’ card in regular UNO). The object of the game is to get all of your animals back into the barn – while remembering to call out UNO MOO! when you only have one animal left.

Not only does my preschooler easily understand and like this game, but her older sisters have loved playing it with her too. There’s just something about the feeling of satisfaction you get when you push someone’s animal into the barn and put yours in it’s place, lol. The ‘big girls’ picked the game up immediately, where it took a couple of times playing it for my 3-year-old to ‘get’ the idea of the Farmer and Skunk. She already knows her colors and animals, so the rest was easy for her. We received this game while my younger two girls were home sick from school (which is why they’re in their pajamas in the pictures – sorry!) and it provided a lot of entertainment for two “still slightly feverish but feeling better and bored with everything in the house” little girls. Even now that they’re all feeling better, they still enjoy playing this game – and I love that it’s something they can all play together – or that I can sit down and play with all three of them.

The bottom line:

UNO MOO! is a good basic introduction into the ideas needed to play the original UNO game, and also helps teach young kids concepts like matching, knowing their basic colors, and counting. Turning a card game in to a more physical one works well for preschoolers too – since there’s more for them to physically do during the game, and the game pieces also can provide a distraction for them to play with while they’re waiting for their next turn. It’s a fun game that even older kids seem to enjoy playing so is a good way for families to play together, and let preschoolers be included in the game.

Where can you find it?:

You can order UNO MOO! directly from the Mattel online shop at http://shop.mattel.com, or from just about any retailer that sells children’s games. The game is also available on Amazon. The list price on Mattel’s site is $20.99. You can also follow the Mattel shop on Twitter or become a fan of Mattel or Uno on Facebook.

This post courtesy of: Mattel and their PR division. No payment or compensation, other than product samples as described above, was received for this post.