Milton Bradley’s Disney Princess Memory game is a remake of the classic Memory game of years ago. The game comes in a plastic wrapped cardboard box with seventy-two colorful cards printed with Disney Princess movie characters fitted in to a cardboard template. The cards easily pop out of the template and are ready for play. The box also comes with a plastic organizer to keep the matching cards in when they are not in use. Also inside the box is a sheet of instructions although the game itself is simple enough to play they may come in handy for any family who has not played any version of the Memory game before.

The aim of the Memory game is to obtain the most matched pairs of cards hereby becoming the winner. The cards are shuffled and then arranged face down (princess side down) on the floor or table. Each player takes a turn at turning over two cards in an attempt to find a matched pair, if a matched pair is not found the two cards are turned back over and the next player takes a turn. If a matched pair is found the player takes the cards out of play and holds them off to the side. Once one player has the majority of pairs in play they are declared the winner!

The Memory game is also available from Milton Bradley in the original Memory format, a Spiderman and Friends edition, a Dora the Explorer edition, a general Disney edition, a Pooh bear edition, a Backyardigans edition, and a Toy Story edition. Each edition of the game retails in stores such as ToysRUs for $9.99 each.

I have always been a huge fan of board games as a means for both education and as a means for bringing together families without the use of television and junk food. Memory has also been a favorite game of mine for as long as I can remember and one that I used to play as a child. The game was not only easy to open and “assemble” but within five minutes of opening the game it is ready for play which unfortunately is not the case with many games today. The brightly colored matching cards simply pop out of the cardboard template and are ready for use which is yet another great factor to this game. The game is easy to set up and easy to explain and does not come with rules that are difficult for younger children to understand making it a great starter game for young children.

Once the game is actually set up play time is long enough to engage children but usually not so long that they become bored with the game and frustrated with having to sit still and play for so long. While the play time is short the time is valuable learning time in which children are forced to focus and develop their recognition skills as well as their ability to remember images. While there may be a minimal amount of frustration as children struggle to remember where cards they had previously seen are located it should be frustration for most children that is easily directed and identified as frustration with not remembering and not frustration with the game itself. I find in times of frustration with this game it is helpful to remind children that this is “just a game and it’s supposed to be fun,” while this does not always diffuse frustration it does proovea helpful reminder for older children.

There are few things which I do not like about the game “Memory” but one of them is the inability to play it without a large space to spread out the cards, something which can not be helped because of the nature of the game itself. With fewer cards to play the game would not require as much room to play but it would also not proove to be as challenging. The second factor which I dislike about the Memory game is that it is not as durable as I would like. Games like Memory get very exciting when they are played which often results in quick actions which cause cards to be bent and damaged. I have yet to find a Memory game that has been able to stand up to more than a year of play and while I agree that board games should be refreshed once in a while I also believe that they should be durable enough to shelf and pull out again a year or so later for play without the pieces being in tatters.

All in all I believe that the Memory game is one of the best games any parent can purchase for their household, it encourages educational growth as well as family togetherness but it is not a game that is too challenging for the younger members of the family. The price of this game is another reason why I recommend it for families, it is not one of those $30 board games that take hours to get through the instructions, it retails for under $10 at any store and comes in a variety of designs that are sure to appeal to any child. Even with the “con’s” of the Memory game mentioned above I cannot say that this game is one I would turn down for family game night.