REVIEW: Bananagrams Word Games – Fun For the Whole Family

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I LOVE games! Board games, card games, paper games, word games, I love them all. So I was excited to try out the games offered by Bananagrams, which I’d heard about but never had the chance to try.

The first four are fun, addicting word games and the fourth is dominoes with a fruit twist. The first three games come packaged in a bag that is shaped like the fruit they are named after. Zip It is a travel game and comes in a zipper pouch. It also comes with a small book that lists unusual words (like Q without the U or ends in C) All the tiles and cubes are made from quality ceramic and feel like they will last a long time. 

Bananagrams – Like A Solitaire Scrabble Race

Basically all players start with the same number of letter tiles and the rest in a BUNCH. Players race each other to create their own scrabble type layout, intersecting words. You can rearrange what you have at any time. When you use all your tiles, call PEEL and take one more. If you don’t like what you have, call DUMP and exchange one tile for three more. Keep going until there are less tiles in the BUNCH than there are players and then first player to get rid of all tiles shouts BANANAS. Words are checked and she is either declared the winner or a ROTTEN BANANA. 

I played this with a bad speller and I’m a good speller so to be fair, she was able to ask if her word was spelled right during the game before going on. We both used a dictionary a few times too. This worked well for us and it was close. I won by mere seconds. This was way more fun than Scrabble because you can rearrange the tiles at any time to make better words. This came in handy when we had only one letter and so we added an S to a word or an E to a H (HE) and then later we could take those back and make a bigger word somewhere else. See our game in photos on Google+ (you don’t have to be a member to view it.)

Appletters – Like a Word Snake

With Appletters, you have to use your tiles to create a word you can add to the beginning or end of a word that’s already there so that it ends up making a long snake. No criss-cross words here! You start with eight tiles and if you can’t go, you say PICK AND PASS and pick three tiles and play passes to the next player. Winner is first person to get rid of all tiles. 

This makes it more challenging actually as you have less letters to work from. There are variations for younger children as well and my favourite part, at the end the winner says, “How Do You Like Them Apples?” 

Pairs in Pears – Like Nothing Else


These letters are divided into four suits and you have to make word pairs that share one letter, in the same suits.  Words must be at least three letters long. How many tiles you start with and how many pairs you need to win depend on the number of players.

For two players for example each of you would have 52 tiles and have to make 4 pairs of words.

It seems tricky at first because of the different suits. I think it would have been easier if they were different colours or fonts instead of coloured in differently. The images to the left actually shows the right way and the wrong way to play. The one that says JOB and LOG is wrong because the letters are from different suits. FIX and HIT is correct. 

Zip It – Like Bananagrams On the Go


Everything you need in one little travel pouch. Even the zippers on the pouch are part of the game – you use them for scoring! Take 12 cubes, use the cubes, on any side to make a crossword grid in front of you. Keep rearranging till you have no more cubes. Call ZIP and move your zipper one spot for one point. If you have anything mispelled or against rules (proper names or abbreviations) you lose point and other player gets the point. After each round, mix up the cubes and redraw. First player to reach 10 wins.

I can’t wait to bring this camping this summer. It’s so hard to play games outside when you need to track a score because the paper gets blown away by the wind and the pen rolls off the table. Now I can have a game that can keep it’s own score too! Using cubes with 6 sides means less pieces to (not) lose. 


Fruitominoes – Like Dominoes… With Fruit

Instead of black dots on these dominoes, you will find fruit pictures. Easier for children, brighter colours and makes you crave a fruity treat! That’s about it!

Seriously… you WILL want to eat fruit.

*Disclosure: I received the product(s) mentioned above free of charge by the company or PR representative for evaluation purposes. No other compensation was provided. See my Disclosure Policy for more information. 

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