Cardboard Corner: Review of Top That!

Here is a mini-Lego set. Here are the instructions. How fast can you put it together? Ok, good job. Now, if I take a copy of the same set and we start at the same time, can you put it together faster than me?  Hmm, no. I’m faster. Ok, let’s try a different set of instructions. How about now? Who is faster? Ok, you learned something—that was faster than me. Let’s try another set of instructions to determine champion of the universe!  If this sounds interesting, then definitely check out Top That! (2016).

The theme is not Lego, rather a classic magic show. In Top That! 2-4 players compete to see who is the fastest magician to put together a hat, rabbit, coin, barrel, and cup according to rotating sets of designs. Complete hand-eye coordination needed, players must stack/combine their five-piece set of components according to the design shown on the current card. First person to complete the design wins the card, and a new round starts.  First person to collect five cards wins the game. (Players can choose the target number if they want—five, ten, whatever.)

Simple, lightning fast, and a real test of thinking under fire, Top That! will appeal to highly competitive people, but warrants attention from families in general. Developing thinking skills under pressure, I play with my 6-year old son, giving him a three-second head start for each card. Sometimes he wins, and sometimes I win, but we both win in terms of the degree of focus and logic needed to complete the tasks. Yes, don’t play when you’re tired—or do play when you’re tired if you need to wake up.

Top That! is marketed as a family/children’s game, and as mentioned it is entirely possible to play with all ages with simple rule tweaks. But there is absolutely no reason why a group of adults can’t sit down and have a raucous 10-15 minutes. Fires will burn in people’s eyes. Just make sure you have a rule in place to indicate when a person has completed building a design. We used first person to slap the table, which worked well.

The plastic pieces are extremely sturdy—a necessity given how they will be mashed and smacked around. A physically and mentally active game, there will be a lot of table talk—shouts of success, laughter at botched setups, and everything between. The rules extremely simple and setup time almost nothing, Top That! is a burst of positive energy that gets the brain trying to talk very quickly with the hands. Sometimes the hands listen, and sometimes they don’t—to the group’s merriment.