I’ll make this one brief. This was a lackluster Christmas gift for my older daughter. I saw this game in Marshall’s for $7.99 and with only a cursory inspection of it (e.g., “oh look, it’s a Madagascar game…Ana likes Madagascar!”), I threw it in my cart thinking, “how bad could it be?” Games are like that aren’t they? The boxes are always so fun to wrap – so perfectly box-like, and there are so many colorful pieces and rules and such. The whole thing just screams GIFT ITEM.

We finally broke the game open a couple of days ago and it was, well, how can I put this? YAWN, YAWN, YAWNITY-YAWN

Game play involves placing about 16 cards face down around the game board. Each card has a picture of a character from the movie on it. Players take turns spinning a pointer and moving their chosen game character (naturally a character from the movie) forward along a trail of stepping-stone-like circles which have pictures of the movie characters on them. You then need to turn over one of the aforementioned cards and try to match it to whatever character you land on. Fun, right? If you get a match, you remove the card from beside the board and put a colorform copy of the animal onto a separate board which has nothing to do with the actual board you’re playing on. The winner is the person with the most matches.

I don’t think there’s enough merchandising going on here. They could’ve included character-shaped dice for example, or fake tattoos. I won’t even get into how the game pieces kept falling over because they were all top heavy.

It was difficult staying awake past about three moves. My 8-year-old had a bit of fun playing with the colorforms, but we both unanimously agreed this was LAME. You’re much better off playing concentration with a deck of .99 playing cards.

Me: ALL you want are Barbie dolls? You have a lot of dolls already, honey..

My Child: Barbie needs a friend! I want the Christmas Barbie

Of course she wanted the Christmas Barbie – retailing at about $40 – $44 , the wayyy overdressed and make-upped doll was available everywhere. I almost didn’t get it because I knew it would end up naked and on either the floor of my car or in the bathroom with all the other desolate, frizzy-headed, forsaken Barbie dolls she owned.

But who could resist this?

I got it…at the last minute…because a good friend said she’d gotten one for her 5-year-old and I thought, “Oh, won’t E be so surprised when she opens this up on Christmas Day!!”

That was the fantasy. The reality: The toy is meant to be displayed and comes with a stand, which I knew about, but I wasn’t expecting that the doll’s arm wouldn’t straighten (yes, much like Les Paul, poor Holiday Barbie is forced to put her hand on her comically narrow hip for all eternity). Barbie’s face is just SLATHERED with makeup and she looks very glitzy until you get that pretty dress off her and lose one of her shoes, which is promptly what my 4-year-old did.

To her credit (my child’s, not Barbie’s), she has played with her quite a bit, but alas my prediction was correct. The doll now sits at the bottom of my car.

Ah well, live and learn. Then again, probably not.