Card games have had a bit of a resurgence lately. With everyone spending a lot more time inside with their loved ones, the search is on for family friendly activities.
We have two children, aged 7 and 4, so it can be a challenge to find something that’s engaging for our son but can be understood and played by our daughter. Plus we’re all super competitive!
We jumped at the chance to try out Totes Emosh, which recently featured on BBC’s The Customer is Always Right.
How do you play?
The concept is a simple twist on charades. Each player has a ‘key card’ with 48 emoji faces printed on it, plus there are 48 playing cards. Starting with the person with the roundest face (or in our case, the bossiest child), you take turns to pick up one of the playing cards and attempt to replicate the emoji face. The other players have to shout out the correct number and the person that guesses correctly gets to keep the card. Whoever has the most cards at the end is the winner.
Key cards and playing cards 
Some faces are easier to pull!
Did we like it?
We all loved this game, so much so that we made it through the whole deck of playing cards (pretty much unheard of in our house) Turns out that my husband is pretty adept at guessing, and even beat our 7 year old!
Our 4 year old really enjoyed it, the only slightly tricky part was her reading out the corresponding numbers on the key card, so it actually became a great bit of maths practice too.
There was a lot of laughing going on, which helped to diffuse the competitiveness.
Totes Emosh is brilliant fun for video calls too, each player just needs their own pack and you’re good to go. Its also perfect for parties, hens and stags. I won’t make any kind of suggestions regarding alcohol, but I would imagine it would enhance the experience.
Where can I buy it?
Totes Emosh was dreamed up by business partners David Barrett and Julius Goldthorpe. The game recently beat two other inventions on BBC’s The Customer is Always Right, a show which tests out new products on the general public and gets them to vote for their favourite.
You can buy Totes Emosh online on their super neon website.
*We were gifted a pack of Totes Emosh in exchange for an unbiased review.