Have you ever seen those mole-bopper machines in amusement arcades where you have to bash moles on the head as quickly as you can as soon as they pop their heads up out of random holes ? Well, that's basically the idea behind Molehill Mania. Inside the box, you get a plastic molehill with two fake wooden plank levers, two plastic mallets with a hole in the bottom and 11 moles (1 red, 5 green and 5 blue).
It's dead easy to set up the game. You just put all the moles in the molehill and you're off. No batteries are required which is a welcome change. Both players have to bash the two planks to make all the moles fly out of the molehill. There are several possible variations of the game - basically, you need to get 6 moles into your mallet so that the little yellow mole pops up and declares you the winner but you could go for speed alone, select a specific colour, make it a requirement to alternate colours or award different numbers of points to the different coloured moles and go for the highest score.
Whichever version you play, you'll be in for lots of giggling and excitement. Unfortunately, you will also be in for lots of mad scrabbling under the settee trying to retrieve stray moles that have pinged across the floor (unlike Chameleon Crunch, which needs a laminate or lino floor, this one would probably actually be better on thick carpet because they wouldn't roll away so far and the carpet would probably also absorb some of the noise from the mallets whacking on the floor !).
The moles are quite difficult to get out of the mallet once you've finished, which is a shame because it ends up taking longer trying to set the new game up than actually playing. I would have liked to have seen a molehill with three or four planks and mallets rather than two, as this could have easily been done and would have made it accessible for a larger number of players.
It's a fun game though and I do really like the fact that it doesn't need batteries.
star rating : 4/5
RRP : £16.99
Disclosure : I received a selection of games from Mattel in order to write honest reviews.
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one end of the mallet with the hole in comes out to allow you to remover the moles
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