A Veggie Sticks Game?

I was not looking for another product tie-in game so soon.  (See last post about a maze on a Cheerios box.)

We regularly each Veggie Straws, thinking they're "more healthy" than potato chips.  I can't not read words that are right in front of me, so I found myself looking at the ingredients.  Mostly potato powder and potato starch, flavored/colored with some other vegetable powders.  That's fine.  That's about what we expect from snacks these days.

The unexpected came when I scanned the barcode and it said sensibleportions.com.  I figured that would be some general website about what the sensible portions of foods should be.  That's where we keep overdoing it.  It would be great to find a site that lists the right portions of the foods we eat.  But it turns out "Sensible Portions" is the freaking brand name.  I assumed it would be Frito-Lay or one of the endless companies owned by them -- I never cared or thought to look at the brand.  We like their snacks.  I just have brand exhaustion.

Anyway, that redirects back to gardenveggiesnacks.com.  I was about to semi-rage-quit the site, only to see the funny word "Snackspiration" in their menu bar ... which had Family Activities, which had ... a board game?

Yes, board games are a part of life.  That's the theme of this blog, so I had to explore a bit.  I wasn't expecting anything special from a snack product board game, but you know what?  It looks cute.  Here's the link: page and PDF.

I'll give them credit for trying to get people to have some mindless fun.  The game pieces are little bags of (properly branded) snacks, and you move around the board gaining and losing and stealing card representing the little veggie sticks.  You roll a die and move, and if you land on a space showing a snack, you draw a card, otherwise do what the space tells you to do.  Sometimes moving to a certain color or swapping spaces.




I wasn't even going to write about this one except for the very final rule where, if you reach the end and don't have at least two veggie sticks, you go back to the start.  That's just hilarious.  One extra bit of chaos in an already 100% luck-driven game.  Perfect for kids, who will enjoy stealing those little cards from each other and then get mad when they get sent back for not having enough.

We printed the board.  Rather than spend ink on all the little cards, we grabbed a deck of cards, and for pieces we used erasers that were sitting in front of us.  It was about as silly as expected, going back to start two or three times per game, and each game lasting no more than 7 rolls.  Meh.  It was nice of the brand to try and make something fun for kids.


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