Marvin Blaine from Los Angeles, California is the inventor of Mine Games. It’s a multiplayer game where kids must step on a given number of colorful toy domes and avoid stepping on the dome that sounds off the alarm. Marvin will pitch Mine Games on The Toy Box on October 22. Kids are great at obstacle games and Mine Games has a fun and a noisy payoff for failure (kids love noisy stuff) when they step on the hidden mine — a little like the classic Operation game where bad kid surgeons get a very loud, alarming notification of their clumsiness with the surgical tools.
Mine Games comes with 12 soft tiles, 12 rubbery domes and one buzzer. The titles and domes can be set up many ways — in a circle, like hopscotch, or on chairs like musical chairs. After someone hides the buzzer under one of the domes, kids then spin the spinner to find out how many domes they need to step on – without stepping on the hidden buzzer. It’s fun, especially since the kids probably won’t be thinking about the real world mines that children in war-ravaged countries must still navigate. Or will they think of that, making this game a little uncomfortable? It’s probably not an issue when next up for the kids are video games like Call of Duty and Carmageddon. The Toy Box airs Sundays at 7pm on ABC.
