Evangeline and I played Duck, Duck, Bruce today.

[conuly]

And we also played a round of Memory with our new set. (I gave away the old one, with the whole "first games" set, to Ana's school. It was the only one of those games we played, and it was impossible to store.)

Both those games have boxes that take up waaaaaay more space than the game requires (Sherlock (which I advise you to get) is another one, and it itself came shipped in this box which was a zillion times huger than the box containing the game itself. WTF?), which is so annoying.

I measured it. The Memory cards take up exactly 20% of the box they're in. Okay, so sure, you want some room to get the cards out of the box - but still, the box could've been a quarter of its actual size! I'd pay extra not to have to punch them out myself, anyway. Duck, Duck, Bruce comes in the standard-sized Gamewright box - all their boxes are a good 25% larger than the games they contain. Given that they're all card games, would it be so hard to stick the rules on a few extra cards and put the whole thing in a standard deck-of-cards box instead of a container with a lid and all? It's save space on the shelf, that's for sure.

Got a set of Apples to Apples Kids for Ana's school, and, although the box is appropriately sized the cards are insanely flimsy. I'm not sure I want to entrust this to a group of small children - or big children for that matter. Is there a way to remedy this? Help me, guys! You're my only hope!

Comments

[karalianne.livejournal.com]

Get the cards laminated. Or the school can do it, I'm sure they have a ginormous laminator in the office. Laminating will make them less likely to tear, even if they're already plasticized.

I've seen games moved into Ziploc baggies with just the cover of the box inside. Puzzles, too. (Have you noticed that puzzle boxes are usually a little bigger than necessary, too?)

The box thing wouldn't matter so much if everyone used the same size box regardless of size of game/puzzle!

[conuly]

Laminate the cards, there's an idea. I'll stick a post-it on the box to that effect or do it myself. Kinko's?

As for baggies, I know what you mean, we've done that.

[karalianne.livejournal.com]

Kinko's, Staples... anywhere they do printing, they should be able to do laminating. Check out the prices.

[beezelbubbles.livejournal.com]

if you don't want to laminate, your local comic shop/gaming store would have sleeves for them. Collectible Card Gamers (Magic, Pokemon, etc.) use them, since the cards they're playing with can be worth a fair ammount of money. But since this is just Apples to Apples, laminating shouldn't be a problem.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we used sleeves for our Race for the Galaxy cards. It's a good game, but the cards would have worn out way too quickly if we hadn't. And it wasn't very expensive. I'm not sure how expensive laminating is.

It also has the benefit of giving some protection that is easy to clean if something spills on it. Or something you can replace if the spill is particularly problematic.