For the last couple of Christmases I’ve been making things out of gingerbread to take round to a friends house for their kids. In the past I’ve done a couple of classic houses,
and last year a train.
This year I decided to try for a structural icing free design for a Christmas tree.
Looks like I was one of the lucky few to get allocated one of this round of Matterboxes.
Matterbox are an offshoot from the Royal Mail that ships cardboard boxes with samples from different companies to people in the hope that they will try the samples and spread the word (looks like they’ve achieved their goal with me this time). There have been 2 previous boxes, a pilot and the first edition, I got a copy of the first edition last year. I really like the concept of Matterbox, it’s nice to see the Royal Mail branching out and looking for new ways to make use of it’s network in these days of email and declining post.
This time round it was an all Cabury affair, based around their Spots v Stripes campaign. The concept is to encourage a sense of competition in the run up to the 2012 Olympics by creating 2 virtual teams that can compete against each other to score points. The competition can take nearly any form that has 2 opposing teams.
As part of the campaign Cabury ran a competition to create games that could be used, and this release of Matterbox contains the 2 winning entries and a Spots v Stripes chocolate bar.
Egg-a-thon comprises of 4 small platic eggs, a dice and the board (the box), players start with both their eggs in the start zone, then take it in turn to roll the dice. If a player rolls a 6 they get to use the 6 and get another go, if they roll a 1 they loose their turn. The player can move their eggs forward, backward, left or right and move them in such a way as to obstruct their opponent, the score rolled on the dice between eggs. The winner is the first player to get both eggs to the finish line.
In this box there are 8 numbered counters and a stick of chalk. You use the chalk to draw a racetrack and then between 2 and 8 players take it in turns to flick their cars round the track. If there are only 2 players then each player has 4 cars, 4 players each get 2 cars. If the counters end up out side the lines of the track drawn in chalk then place the counter back on track and turn it over, if you crash in to one of the other players counters, both are turned over. If a players counter is upside down when it gets round to their turn, then all they can do is to turn it the right way up.
The idea is you play the games and then register your scores for one of the two teams, I’ll take them to the office tomorrow and see if anybody wants to play.