I grew up on Hungry Hungry Hippos, frantically controlling my hippo as marbles flew
across the feeding ground, trying desperately to get more marbles than
my cousins and brother. Sometimes it seemed that the harder I tried the
fewer marbles gained successful entry into my hippo's mouth...but it was
a lot of fun anyway. Very noisy, very chaotic, but definitely a blast.
Why hippos and marbles? Well, marbles are the easiest objects to
maneuver, and hippos are so big and hungry, they'll eat anything.
(Though I would be quite surprised to find a live hippo happily gobbling
up marbles in his native habitat.) And they're just so darn cute!
This game is great fun for young children, preferably four of them.
Five minutes is an unusually long duration for this game, which works
quite well since children this age tend to have such short attention
spans. It's the ideal game to be found in a kindergarten classroom or at
a picnic with young children. But the children shouldn't be too young
-- probably no younger than three or four. A baby or toddler could
decide the hippos ought to share their dinner with him, and you could
end up with a choking child on your hands. For five- and six-year-olds,
though, this game can't be beat!
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