Despite its name-with-gross-connotations, this new game from Gamewright has nothing to do with becoming ill. Okay, there’s a picture of a queasy-looking dog on the box, but other than that, I promise there is no gross-ness involved. Instead, this is a game involving — you guessed it — cookies. Cookies that you occasionally are required to toss.

In Toss Your Cookies, 3-8 players aged 8 and up attempt to collect a set of five matching cookies plus the milk by “passing, swapping, and tossing cards according to the dice rolls.” It can get a bit chaotic, but sometimes that’s what attracts kids to a game (what is it with kids and chaos anyway?). Playing time is stated as 15 minutes, but I believe the game could go on for quite a bit longer, depending on what mood the dice are in.

In a nutshell: Toss Your Cookies contains 48 cookie cards (eight sets of six matching cookies), 4 half-eaten cookie cards, 3 wild cards, 1 milk card, and 2 colorful dice. The neat thing about the cards is they’re circular, made of a good sturdy cardboard, and illustrated very nicely. (The problem with that, of course, is that playing this game puts me in the mood to eat cookies, and that has its consequences.) To set up the game, you first choose one set of cookie cards for each player involved (the rest can stay in the box), and mix in the appropriate number of wild cards and half-eaten cookie cards (there’s a chart in the instructions to give you this info). Cards are thoroughly mixed, face down on the table, and everyone takes exactly seven cards.

Wild cards can be used in place any cookie. Half-eaten cookies do absolutely nothing for you — they just take up space in your hand.

A turn is simple: roll both dice and take the action indicated. Here are some things you might roll on your turn and what they mean:

• Swap + a number — Exchange the shown number of cards with any other player. No peeking at their cards first, though. It’s a blind swap.

• Pass Left or Right + a number — All players pass the shown number of cards in the indicated direction.

• Toss + a number — All players select from their hand the number of cards shown and simultaneously toss them, face-up, into the middle of the table. Immediately, everyone scrambles to grab the same number of cards back from the table. This is sheer chaos, and I suppose it could become violent if you let it. Also, one of the “numbers” on the number die says “All,” so sometimes you have to toss your entire hand into the center of the table and grab up seven new cards. If you’re close to winning, this can only be described as: “Aaaarrrgghhh!”

• Special milk actions: The “number die” also has 2 sides with a picture of the milk. If this is rolled, whoever has the milk must either pass it (left or right), swap it with the player who rolled, or toss it into the table, where everyone else scrambles to get it.

As soon as one player has a set of 5 matching cookies plus the milk card, they’re supposed to shout “Snickerdoodle!” and they win the game. At our house, it’s perfectly acceptable to not shout “Snickerdoodle!” but instead to shout something like, “I won!” or “Game over, I win. Now get out of my way — I’m going to go eat some Oreos!” A person can win in the middle of another player’s turn, or during their own.

The reason I think this game could go on for a long time is because it’s quite possible that you could be really, really close to winning and then someone rolls a “Toss All” and now you’re out of luck and back to a hand of random non-winning cookies. Admittedly, though, the games we’ve played have lasted about 15-20 minutes.

We had a good time with this game. C., naturally, liked it more than Chad and I did (perhaps since we generally try to avoid chaos in our lives). But it’s a good game for kids, definitely. I think some kids younger than 8 who are used to playing games could get the hang of this as well. Also, I really like that it plays up to 8. That makes it good for family get-togethers with a bunch of kids, or even for a birthday party game for kids.

In summary:

Toss Your Cookies

Number of Players: 3-8
Time required: 15 minutes
Ages: 8 and up
Where to buy: You can purchase this game directly from Gamewright if you wish, and you can also find it at FunAgain. Gamewright games often pop up at our local Barnes & Noble, too, though I haven’t seen this one there yet.

Callapidder recommends it: For chaos- and cookie-loving kids. C.’s description of the game: “Fun, tasty, and wack-o.”

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