#154 in Toys & Games
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Reddit mentions of ThinkFun Rush Hour Traffic Jam Brain Game and STEM Toy for Boys and Girls Age 8 and Up – Tons of Fun With Over 20 Awards Won, International Bestseller for Over 20 Years
Sentiment score: 7
Reddit mentions: 18
We found 18 Reddit mentions of ThinkFun Rush Hour Traffic Jam Brain Game and STEM Toy for Boys and Girls Age 8 and Up – Tons of Fun With Over 20 Awards Won, International Bestseller for Over 20 Years. Here are the top ones.
Buying options
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- Trusted by Families Worldwide - With over 50 million sold, ThinkFun is the world's leading manufacturer of brain games and mind challenging puzzles
- Develops critical skills - Playing through the challenges builds reasoning and planning skills and provides a great stealth learning experience for young players
- What you get – Rush Hour is the classic traffic jam logic game and one of the all-time most popular STEM toys and gifts for boys and girls ages 8 and up Contains 40 challenges from beginner to expert, a game grid, cars, and a game-go storage bag
- Enormously popular – Rush Hour is one of the most popular logic games ever made, with over 10 million units sold worldwide
- Comes with multi-level challenges - Rush Hour comes with 40 beginner to expert challenges that become increasingly difficult as you play through them
Features:
Specs:
Color | Multicolor |
Height | 8 Inches |
Length | 8.88 Inches |
Number of items | 1 |
Release date | January 2006 |
Size | - |
Weight | 1 Pounds |
Width | 2.5 Inches |
I'm sure you could go down to PM and say exactly what you've said here and get more recommendations than you can handle.
There are lots and lots of cool, challenging and beautiful puzzles out there - and you live near a warehouse full of them!
I assume there's a retail store, too? and the guys who do their videos must work there as well as Allan Stein who founded the company - I'll bet they all love to recommend stuff.
That said, browsing the site is fun once you find your way around and can avoid the things you don't like
Here's my standard "how to get started" rap (a little old, so some items might be unavailable):
I'd say you probably want to check out several different categories of puzzle:
Anyway, I'd say try a couple of disentanglement things (both wire and wood), a packing puzzle or two and a few interlocking burrs (I recommend trying a relatively traditional one and a couple of the fancier ones from Pelikan or Cubic Dissection). See what sort of things appeal to you and follow on from there.
Do check out the links in the sidebar, too. Allard's Blog and PuzzleMad are great, Rob's Puzzle Page is vast and you can learn a lot just by browsing PuzzleMaster and some of the other shops.
Here is a list of wooden burr-type puzzles under $30 that I have played with and enjoyed - I made this awhile ago so thy may not all still be available, but this should get you started
**Open Box Packing aka Deadly Romance - a really nice caged burr
Cross Cage by Tom Jolly - a burr? 3D maze? Pretty cool
Four Caged - a really tough little caged burr
Epsilon - a knockoff of Vertex Burr #1 , originally designed by Yavuz Demirhan in 2012 - great puzzle
Shape Shifter - very tough assembly puzzle - soma cube on steroids
Sarcophagus - surprisingly challenging. I have a thing for "3 sticks in a box" puzzles like Tribord
Matchbox aka Oscar's Matchboxes- tricky and a cool idea
Double Saturn - similar to some of Osanori Yamamoto's classic work, this is tough little Pelikan-style puzzle on the cheap
Four L - like The Double Saturn above
Quadstair
Four In The Box - just above the $30 limit, but it's pretty fun and two puzzles in one
Feel free to ask questions on the sub about specific puzzles or categories
Puzzlers are a pretty supportive community - welcome!
I used to play Rush Hour when I was a kid. It's a puzzle game where you move cars/trucks around in an attempt to get your red car out of the traffic jam. They get progressively harder as you go along.
https://www.amazon.com/ThinkFun-5000-Rush-Hour/dp/B00000DMER
It is called Rush Hour ;)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Think-Fun-5000-Rush-Puzzle/dp/B00000DMER
I think this is the bun version for the Rush Hour Traffic Jam game...
https://www.amazon.com/ThinkFun-Rush-Traffic-Logic-Girls/dp/B00000DMER
There are lots of great gender neutral toys for all ages! I'm especially fond of building toys, especially for younger kids. Blocks and tinker toys are great (I looooooved mine), and legos (especially those open-ended sets) are good for when they get a little older.
Educational toys are also a good one. A three-year-old isn't gonna realize that a set of Go Fish Alphabet cards will help them learn the alphabet. They think it's just a fun game. Older children can move into board games and puzzle games like Rush Hour.
A lot of arts and craft kits are gender neutral, too. Remember those Klutz books? Sure, they've got Glitter Face Paint While You Do Your Nails and Have a Tea Party kits (which, tbh, I actually don't think are that bad), but they've also got some awesome kits for paper airplanes, origami, learning magic, and learning to sew (a skill that everyone should have).
Also, science toys and kits. Chemistry sets are perfect for older kiddos, and younger ones are happy with dinosaur action figures or solar system plushies.
Finally, books. You can never go wrong with books.
What did you enjoy playing with as a child? Does the giftee have any particular interests (e.g. crafts, music, reading, science)? I'd start with those two questions and go from there.
Where is the red car?
Reminds me of this "Rush Hour" game from my childhood.
I bought this game for the daughter of a friend of mine in China. So I guess she should be prepared when this happens.
With ThinkFun, were you looking at games like this? I played games like that in the gifted classes I had in elementary school, and they were a lot of fun. These days, you can even download that type of game for an iPhone or iPad for 99 cents, or for free.
For older kids (say, 10 and up), the card game 24 is great for building critical thinking and math skills.
Classic games are always good as you are familiar with them and you can re-use components for some. My favorites in no particular order
Games
Hangman
Read a list of words from a file, randomly select one, and play a game of hangman!
War
Model cards and a deck of cards, give the 'AI' half the deck, the player the other half, then keep drawing with user interaction. Doesn't really require AI and is a pretty simple simulation
Tic-Tac-Toe
Self explanitory. Bonus points for functional AI
Rush Hour
See classic rush hour games. Get the player's car to the other end of the traffic jam. Bonus points for a hint system where the next move is given to you.
Sudoku
The classic numbers puzzle. Again, bonus points for a prediction system. bonus points + 1 for a solver (given any soduku puzzle from your favourite puzzle book, it will automatically solve it for you)
Applications
Tip Calculator
Calculate tips. Bonus points for not using any buttons (I.e., the tip is automatically re-calculated when you move a slider / edit a value)
Grocery List
Create a list of grocery items for going to the store. Be able to save out and read back in Grocery Lists. TripleQuadruple bonus points for being able to print.
Edit: I would like to add -> you shouldn't focus on projects for python. Think about what you want to do, then think about the best tool for the job. All of these can be done in python. But you should be focusing on the overall process, not the specific language you are learning if that makes sense. For example, if you learn to do it in Python, you should be able to do it in C# and Java as they have pretty similair (relative) mechanics. Write down a lot of crap before you write a line of code. What objects do I need? How will these objects interact? Am I even going for an OOP model, or can/should this be implemented functionally?
Can't go wrong with Rush Hour.Link
Another one I've enjoyed is called Solitaire Chess Link
It's been a while since I've played them, it might be time to play again
My 4 year old understands Set if I limit the variables a bit (like picking only 1 colour to play with) so your 5 year old could probably play. She also likes Rush Hour which is a solitaire game, but I set up the scenarios for her. She’s starting to get into Quarto which is a bit like Set mixed with tic tac toe.
Labyrinth is a pretty easy game, though she lost interest in it pretty quickly (probably due to the overwhelming cuteness of Pengeloo which came home shortly after).
ThinkFun Rush Hour anyone?
https://www.amazon.com/Think-Fun-5000-ThinkFun-Rush/dp/B00000DMER
more like Rush hour
The same people who designed this
this guy:
http://www.amazon.com/toys-games/dp/B00000DMER
The same guys who made this. How do we make parking...fun?