The biggest thing going on at our house right now is Toy Story 3. My son turned six last week, and it has been Toy Story mania. After a weekend of the 3D movie, toys, books, and a Toy Story Lego themed birthday, Yahtzee Jr for Toy Story 3 showed up on our door step. Within the hour, we sat down to play the game. Let me preface that this is my first encounter with Yahtzee. I’ve always known it was a dice game, but never knew the intricacies of the rules. My wife and Wikipedia.org filled me in on the original version for a frame of reference.
Setup
Setting up the game is pretty easy. There are about twenty cardboard tiles that need to be popped out, and five dice that need stickers added to them. It’s probably best to have an adult put the stickers on. After that, it’s a quick read of the instructions, and then Toy Story Yahtzee Jr is good to go. The instructions also have a nice section that goes through a pretend game. It’s nice to be able to see an example. After the initial setup, you child can easily pull out the game and play it with his or her friends without your help to set it up.
Game Play
The game play is very straight-forward. Roll the dice, figure out what you want to keep, and mark your score. Instead of numbers, each side of the die has a character from Toy Story 3. If you roll a Lotso, you lose that die. The Woody dice serve as wildcards. At the end of each game, you can work on some math skills as you have your child add up the score and see who wins.
The hardest part about the game play is the actual board where the points are scored. The layout and colors are visually confusing. I found myself looking multiple times to make sure I scored my points correctly. It’s a little difficult, but it’s not a show stopper.
How It Went Over
We had a lot of fun during the first iteration of the game. It was exciting to roll the dice, figure out our scores and watch the next player. My wife won the first round by one point. As we moved on to playing it the second time, my son’s attention started to waiver. His interests were focused on how loud he could roll the dice, but we finished and he beat me 16 – 15. We then started the third game, but didn’t finish. At some point in the game he became much more interested in building with the dice and cardboard pieces. Maybe it has something to do with our current Lego obsession, but at that point, the game play was over.
All in all, it was fun and interesting at the start, but eventually lost its allure. My guess is that we could pull it out other times during the summer and get one or two rounds each time. It’s only $10 at amazon.com, so it’s up to you to figure out if it works for you. 
The author of this post was provided with a complimentary copy of Toy Story 3 Yahtzee Jr., but the views and opinions are his own.
Anhtuan Doventry is a dorky dad to four of the greatest kids and a silly husband to the most wonderful wife. He lives in Kingwood, TX, and does IT management work for his day job. Otherwise, he spends his time reading, writing, and coaching as many sports as he can. He also spends a little bit of time researching and reading about tech items (although I think others in the family would argue that it’s a tad bit more than a “little bit of time”).
Anhtuan is excited about contributing to The Father Life. To find out more about Anhtuan, go to http://www.aquickremark.com or follow him at http://twitter.com/aquickremark.