{Giveaway!} Going Bananas for Bananagrams Games

Brian and I LOVE playing games – we have a whole armoire filled with them, and started our collection back in college. At Christmas, we both got each other Bananagrams for a stocking gift, because my friend Amber and her husband introduced us to it a while back and we loved it! It’s a great game for two or more players, and we actually rang in the New Year playing Bananagrams!

So, of course I was really excited when I got the chance to review the whole slew of games from Bananagrams! We decided to have a game night with our friends and try out the Pairs in Pears & Appletters games since we hadn’t tried them before.

PAIRSinPEARS  is a word construction game for ages six and up where players race to make pairs of connecting words in matching patterns.  PAIRSinPEARS comes in a pear-shaped cloth pouch, containing four full alphabet sets in four beautiful distinct patterns.  The game provides educational fun for children learning vowels and consonants, alphabetical order, word construction and pattern recognition.

At first it sounded like this would be too easy to me, but once we started playing and I realized how quickly you had to work to complete your pairs, we had a lot of fun with it. It did take us a little while to figure out the rules…

But then we realized Bananagrams has videos for each of their games explaining how to play. I really love that feature! I think it’d be great if they included QR codes on instructions so people could go straight to the videos with their smart phones.

From a design perspective, I think the tiles for this game are pretty! Love the different patterns:

We also played Appletters:

APPLETTERS is a domino-like game for ages six and up where players connect letters in lieu of dots.  The game comes in an apple-shaped cloth pouch containing 110 ivory-like tiles.  In addition to the version for a younger audience, the game also includes instructions for more adult play – APPLE TURNOVER™ for an extra challenge and APPLESCORE™ for word lovers who like to keep score.

We liked this game, but it did seem a little similar to Bananagrams with some extra features (like the turnover option). There was also the added challenge of only being able to build your word on the last tile played. Overall we enjoyed it!

We also got to review Zip It! I love that this game is for two players, because it’s something Brian and I can play on our own. And it is QUICK, so you can fit in a game quickly and easily! Since the games are packaged in little pouches, they’re all easy to bring along with you.

The last game we got was Fruitominoes, which is a twist on classic dominoes by adding fruits to the design.  The boys think this is SO fun, and it’s especially great for little ones like C – they’re too young to do a whole lot of counting, but it’s easy to see that pears match up with pairs, for example.

Guess what?! You can win your own set of delicious fun…

One lucky reader will win an entire set of Banagrams games, which includes Bananagrams, Pairs in Pears, Appletters, Zip It, and Fruitominoes! This giveaway is open to all US residents aged 18+. Entries will be accepted until the end of the day (midnight Central) Wednesday, March 28. By entering this giveaway you agree to the Official Rules.

Mandatory Entry: Leave a comment below letting me know what your favorite fruit is and which game you’re most excited to try!

(Only valid after the required entry has been completed)

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Note: Bananagrams provided the games for us to review and is providing games for the giveaway. All opinions in this post are honest and are those of me, my friends and family. I was not compensated monetarily for this post.