Something to remind you of Pinocchio -Spin Master Toys Fibber Board Game – Review

Not to hide the secret, Pinocchio is one of the familiar characters at home. Not just becasue of his lies and the long Nose but truly also because what he learnt at the end and how he turned into a good b(t)oy.

So, When we were asked to review Fibber from Spin Master toys, the fun was doubled and we couldn’t wait to see who would have a great escape from balancing a longer nose. It is a fun for the whole family. So just as the name says Fibber is all about – if you fibbed your nose would grow.

It is game recommended for children from Seven and above. Fibber comes with 4 Eyeglasses, 24 Cards, 11 Noses and 1 Game Board. The 24 cards consist of four Bigfoot, four ghost, four alien, four wild, four dragon and four witch cards. The eyeglasses are purple ( Sorry boys who are so fond of blue) and are made of plastic. The nose pieces come in orange, green, blue, red and one silver nose. The nose pieces snap onto the nose piece on the eyeglasses.

The objective of the game is to have the shortest nose after all the noses have been taken to be the winner. It can be played by 2 players or more. There are two versions of the game – one for the advanced players like DD 1 and 2 and one simple method – for players like me who hardly has time for such things.

Guess what – We first tried My version of Fibber because you Know Why – nothing moves at home without Mum being there.

How to Start the Game:

Each player wear the glasses
Put the Mat in the centre
Shuffle and distribute the cards evenly to all the players.
The first player is the one who is on the left to the dealer and the play continues clockwise as in other games.

Here is how we played the game at child version:

First Player Chooses any Card in play, Lay it face down in the centre of the Mat to form the discard pile. Then Announce the card – you can either tell the truth or fib. – Example – you play a Witch

The Next player now has two choices

Either say You fibbed
or play a card

Play a Card:

If they have the same card, They play it face down and announce “I saw a Witch”

If they don’t have the same card, they MUST play another card BUT MUST say “I saw a Witch”

Or Call a Fibber:

If they think, you fibbed, They call you Fibber

If you were honest, the player who called you Fib take a nose and add it to the glasses. And then they pick another card from their hand and starts the play
If you were cheeky, You must take the card back you played and also add a nose to your glasses. Then Pick any card from your hand and continue playing.

This younger version was a bit easy and fast to finish.

So here is how the game is played for advanced version

Put the silver nose on the Big foot on the Mat

The First Player tells how many Big Foot he has seen (and tries to discard) and places that number of cards face down in a discard pile on the Centre game mat.And the Play starts with the Big Foot Card ( Either the first player have it or not doesn’t matter)

If you have Bigfoot cards, you can discard one or more of them and tell the truth.
But if you don’t have any Bigfoot cards you can fib and say you do.
You MUST DISCARD atleast one card per turn

Another player can call you a fibber if they don’t believe how many you have. If you are fibbing you must take a nose and put it on your glasses.

If you are not fibbing you DONT reveal the cards you just played , Take a nose and take all the cards from the discard pile and add them to your hand.
If you were Honest, Show the card you just played to all the others and the player who accused you should take a nose and also all the cards from the discard pile.
If you have a wild card you can use that card in place of any other card.

If you have discarded all the cards, you remove all the noses from your glasses. You then collect and reshuffle all the cards and deal them all out again. You keep playing until all the noses are removed from the playing area, including the silver nose. The silver nose will be the last one removed.

The person with the shortest nose is the winner and if there is a tie, The person with less cards is the winner.

This is not an educational Toy, It is Just all for Fun. Fast and Easy to understand even for the little ones.

Suggested Improvements

There were only 11 noses, there could have been more so the Game gets a bit tricky even when played for the younger version.
The adhesive bag given for the noses does not seem very durable, it could have been something slightly better so the noses wont go missing – already they are less in number
The Game Mat is Very thin – You should be careful if there is a little one around. It could have been made sturdy.

But Overall, It is an excellent fun game and available from the major retailers at the price of approx 12£ and it is on sale for Christmas – Would be a perfect Christmas present and a fun family game.

For more collections from Spin Masters – Visit spinmastertoys.

You can see them at twitter @spinmasteruk.

Disclaimer: I have received this game for a honest review. All opinions are my own.