Don't Break the Ice

Santa always brings my kids a board game. Actually, I always try to have Santa bring a couple of things they can share. It just drives me crazy when I hear them playing nicely and then less than a minute later I hear someone scream, “Don’t touch it, it’s mine.” Last time I checked not a one of them paid for anything. Anyway, they do get their own special gifts, but they get lots of things that belong to us as a family. This year’s game was “Don’t Break the Ice.”

It is simple enough. You set up all the plastic ice cubes, put the polar bear on, and then the players take turns chipping away at the cubes with the plastic mallets until the polar bear falls. No reading required and hours of fun.

It takes longer to set up the ice cubes than it does to play the game. You have to shove them in so that they will stay up and you have to strategically place the big ice cube somewhere on the board for the polar bear. I have pinched my finger a couple of times doing something that should be very simple. Thank goodness the company had enough sense to add extra ice cubes for the families like mine, with a baby that thinks he is getting away with something by running off with a cube. Once the cubes are in their places and the polar bear is ready, you can start your family bonding time.

I have drowned so many polar bears I think Al Gore is going to take me off his mailing list. My kids don’t seem to get bored whacking away at the ice cubes. Kenneth asked me if maybe they would make a version with a ship that hits an iceberg. Ha ha, not funny. But I am impressed that he listens when I read him Magic Tree House adventures.

The goal is to stare at the cubes and figure out which ones you should not hit to keep the polar bear up. There is a lot of strategy involved; one could say that this game is pre-chess. My kids strategize nothing. They pound until an entire row falls off. BUT-they are wonderful about taking turns with the random polar bear attacking.

My son asked me a couple of weeks before Christmas why Santa picked the North Pole for his factory. When I asked him to explain, he said that belugas and penguins couldn’t possibly enjoy a factory in their environment. He also said that it had to be cold inside the factory, or the heat bill was high. Now he is convinced that Santa has huge mallets around to break the ice before a polar bear comes in to steal toys. I love it.

This was a great game, from my crazy family to yours…