Bumpeez are a brand new pocket money toy that is due to launch on 24th August 2011. We have been asked to try them ahead of the launch, so we have beenn using them the last few weeks to see what we thought.
Setting Up
Bumpeez come in a sealed plastic package with 2 Bumpeez in each blind pack. This is quite handy as you can immediately play with a friend from the first purchases onwards. They’re aimed at children aged five to eleven and they’re made up of two parts: a circular chip/coin, featuring 1 of 100 character designs, which is encased in a removable silicone ring, which comes in a variety of different shapes, colours and sizes. When the chip is placed in the ring, Bumpeez® can be bounced and used to play games. This is where the game fun lies as otherwise they are just a collectable item.
In Play
The Bumpeez comes with a few suggestions for games which can either be played with or without the removable silicone ring. We had fun bouncing them against a wall and trying to catch them. This was quite easy to do with one of our Bumpeez, but quite challenging with the other because it was a more difficult shape. More games suggestions will be available on the website after the launch, so look out for these.
What Stopped Play?
Nothing really – they are very easy to use. The downside from a parents perspective may be that there are so many out there to collect and it could get expensive if you were buying a lot. Also, you might want to set some ground rules about where and how your child can play with these e.g. no throwing games in the house. We did limit this to a few locations that seemed lower risk – clearer wall space and hard wood floors. It was better for playing as well as giving me peace of mind around things getting broken around the house.
Price and Availability
Bumpeez are priced at £1.99 for a pack of 2 and will be widely available (28,000 retailers).
Overall
Bumpeez are fun, very portable toys that are quite reasonably priced.
Update: Bumpeez proved popular with H and other visiting children for quite a few years. He did seem to enjoy playing with them and collecting them. We have quite a collection now, but H has now outgrown them. I’ve considered selling them and there does seem to be a bit of a market for them on eBay. That said I don’t think we will be making a fortune out of them. I’m trying to decide whether it’s better to sell as a job lot or individually as a combination of both. I’m not convinced that they will go up massively in value if we hold onto them, so it might just be a case of clearing out clutter and reducing what we have in the house. It’s something I started to do before the pandemic, but stopped because I didn’t want to be constantly going to the post office.
These look like fun.
We just purchased a dino bumpeez and the day after we gave it to our granddaughter its not working.