…. and the reviews just keep coming! An excerpt from Peaches Reviews follows. See the entire article and enter to win these and other great prizes daily at Peaches Reviews.
“McNeill Designs generously sent me 3 items for review!
The first item was the You’ve Been Sentenced. The latest in the evolution of games, “You’ve been Sentenced!” is the first game in history to really turn making sentences into a very funny, playable, and challenging game. Using a unique word deck of pentagon shaped cards containing conjugations of funny words, famous names from throughout history, familiar places, and wild cards, players have to make grammatically correct and justifiable sentences. The real fun begins when players have to read their sentences out loud and explain what they mean to the rest of players. They form the jury and vote thumbs up or down on whether the sentence and justification stand and the points are scored. 540 cards with over 2,500 words insure billions of possible sentences so the game is never repetitive and has unlimited re-play value
This game was sooooo much fun! I loved being able to create crazy sentences and read the sentences that my friends came up with. Let me tell you, my friends are crazzzyyy! Even though the sentences may be silly, what counts is if it’s grammatically correct. This leaves the board open for any type of creation you could possibly come up with!
I was also provided with the all of the You’ve Been Sentenced Add-on Decks. You can only imagine what adding a deck does to this hilarious game!
Did you know that You’ve Been Sentenced is a tv show??!! Yes it’s true… they’re bringing the hilarity of the game right to your living room! The show aired in 2006 and is currently being pitched to major networks. Stay tuned to find when it will air and also how to sign up to be a contestant.
The second item I received was the game Twisted Fish. The old game of go fish just got a very challenging twist. It isn’t child’s play any more! Twisted Fish takes a traditional standby and casts it into the 21st century.
13 unique Fish characters in five different colors, plus 8 unique “Zingers” that allow you to break the rules, makes “Twisted Fish” a unique game experience. The real challenge takes place when asking for the fish cards you are collecting—Now you have to be specific about the type of fish and color you are seeking. “Twisted Fish” challenges you to remember every question asked at the table. It is challenging and fun right down to the very last card!
We promise you’ll fall hook, line, and sinker! Twisted Fish offers laugh-out-loud fun for the entire family.
The characters on these cards are truly twisted! My friends and I had a hard time playing the game because we were way laughing too hard! I’m sure next time will go off without a hitch!
The third item I received was the Wheel of Chore-ture! It’s the Fridge magnet with attitude Need some help around the house? Need to issue a sentence of your child’s choosing? Have them take a spin on the “Wheel of Chore-ture”. Feed the pets! Wash the dishes! Sweep the floors! Set the table! Spin the wheel and assign your task.
Although I do not have children, I was having a blast spinning this every time my boyfriend got on my nerves! C’mon ladies…. You know that sounds fun!!”
One of the things we like to do best is to support our local schools and teachers! Most recently we provided Kris DePonte from Kuumba Academy with a sample copy of You’ve been Sentenced! and the full range of add-on decks to use at her school. Kris is the reading specialist at Kuumba, a Charter School serving kids K-5 in Wilmington, Delaware.
Happy reading, Kuumba!
Cool Mom Picks is one of those sites you come back to again… and again and again. Basically, these cool moms track down cool stuff (what else?!) so you can stay busy being fabulous. They know that cool stuff doesn’t make the mom, but it certainly helps make life a little better!
Mir Kamin of Cool Moms insists that she’s not cool, but as the author of one of the most widely-read parenting blogs on the web, Woulda Coulda Shoulda, we think she is. Her review of You’ve been Sentenced! is below. To check out more great picks, visit the Cool Mom Picks gang.
“Family game night getting a little stale? Gather round for a whole new game of speed, literacy, and I’d say, hilarity with this dandy little game I’ve found right here for you mamas of older kids.
You’ve Been Sentenced! is deceptively simple; each player draws ten cards, flipping them simultaneously as the timer is set. Before time runs out, build a sentence. Easy, right? Each pentagonal card contains five variations of a word (say, zip, zips, zipped, zippy and zipper) with different point values depending on the form, so theoretically it should be easy to come up with something.
Except that the clock is running out… and you get bonus points for using all of your cards… and the sentence has to make sense. Come scoring time, you have to defend your creation, and the jury gets to vote. My career (okay, maybe more a touch of OCD) demanded that I try to use all the cards every time, and then my cruel, cruel family voted me down over and over. I was wounded. But I was laughing too hard to care. Because maybe Girlish shapes fumbled to dripping glasses smelling both of yucky you makes perfect sense, somewhere.”
Like most moms, Trisha Novotny works at it 24/7. But Trisha has taken the concept to a whole new level with 24/7 Moms 24/7 Moms is a great new blog and live webcast that answers the question, “What’s hot this week?” with some of the best new products and offers out there!
You’ve been Sentenced! was recently included in her roundup. To read her review and see what’s hot, visit Trisha at 24/7 Moms .
You’ve been Sentenced! was recently featured on Mom TV 12! To watch, click the video link @ http://www.stickam.com/viewMedia.do?mId=187566359. The You’ve been Sentenced! segment is towards the end of the piece.
Very entertaining!
Tammy Lessick is a 30-something mom of two – a daughter aged 6 and a son aged 10. Her blog, Autism Learning Felt, shares her experiences in raising her autistic son. It also includes product reviews, giveaways and other items Tammy wants to share with all of her readers.
Tammy recently reviewed several McNeill Designs’ products; an excerpt follows. To read her entire review, visit Tammy at Autism Learning Felt Tammy is also sponsoring a giveaway. So be sure to enter by March 8!
“I was introduced to a great new game. You may have heard of it. It’s called You’ve been Sentenced! This is a great educational game for children 8 years old and up. It comes with five decks of cards and each deck fits into it’s own spot in the box for easy play and storage. You can also buy add-on decks on specific subjects like Sports, Sci-Fi and Pop Culture.
I was sent this game to review with my kids. I was hoping that my son would take to it, but he didn’t. My daughter loved it. Even though she is only 6 ½ years old, she was able to play it with a little bit of help from me. Once she got the hang of it, she was able to come up with some great sentences.
That’s the point of the game. You pick ten cards to start with and you have to use as many of them to create a proper sentence. Each card has five different words on it and each word is assigned a point value. After everyone has made their sentences, the total points are recorded and added up. You can challenge another player’s sentence and it is up to all of the players to judge the authenticity of it.
The sentences that we came up with when playing were hilarious. We would laugh at each other’s sentences and help each other to come up with the craziest ones. You aren’t supposed to help each other, but we did. It made it fun. My daughter has had trouble with how to form a proper sentence and this game is really helping her. My son simply doesn’t like to sit still. Maybe when he is older that will change.
If you are a home school mom, teacher, or therapist, this is a great tool to have in your arsenal. It is fun and educational. My daughter doesn’t see playing it as a learning activity. She just sees it as fun. You’ve Been Sentenced is produced by McNell Designs. You can find more information on products from McNeill Designs on their website.
McNeill Designs also sent me the Wheel of Chore-ture and Twisted Fish. My daughter uses the Wheel of Chore-ture to determine what job she is going to do to earn money. This has become a big hit with the two of us. The Twisted Fish is a card game that is based on the classic Go Fish. The cards are colored and have different fish on them. There are also Zinger cards that allow you to do things like pull a card from another opponent’s hand and look at it or prevent a player from taking a card from you. I enjoy playing this game with my daughter and with the girls in her Girl Scout troop.”
About.com recently did a series of interviews with entrepreneurs in a wide variety of business types. Don McNeill, founder of McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds (pictured) was interviewed for the piece. An excerpt follows, but you can read the piece in its entirety at About.com . Also, see some of the other entrepreneurs and theirs businesses, success and struggles. Very interesting reading, indeed!
“Why is your business unique and what’s your pitch?:
Started a game company based on an idea. The flagship product, The You’ve been Sentenced! game has family members from 8 to 88 laughing hysterically at the crazy sentences they create and have to defend. Now winner of 9 national awards, it’s a bargain entertainment value for parents during tough economic times. With 540 cards and over 2,500 words players can create billions of possible sentences and never see the same ones twice. It’s available at B&N, Borders, 1,000+ independent stores and has distribution in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
What led you to start the business?:
On December 28, 2004, I took my family of 5 to dinner where we did a Madlibs on the back of the kids menu. On December 29, in the shower (sorry for the bad visual) I had an idea. I had never seen a game where you had to make sentences. It would be called “You’ve been Sentenced!” I knew the name before I got out of the shower and now I had to convince the boss.
I quickly ran out of the shower soaking wet and woke up my wife Susan with “Honey I have an idea!”
“No! Not now,” was the reply…
I said “No, honey, I really have an idea!” in a slightly different excited tone.
After I had explained the idea, Susan began to catch on and foggily responded with “I haven’t had my coffee yet, but that sounds like a pretty good idea.”
We searched all day on the Internet and could not find anything like my idea. We found a website for teachers and one teacher’s letter to the Toy and Game industry stating how ‘sad it was that each year new word games came to market but never a sentence forming game.’ I called my brother in St. Louis who has two patents to his name and he said “I think that is one of the most brilliant ideas I have ever heard.” We knew for certain now that we were on to something.
In 20 years of selling commercial printing I’ve never burned a bridge so every time I needed something else for the business I called the next person out of my r Rolodex. We pulled the whole idea together and on May 5, 2005, launched the world’s first pentagonal shaped game.
By June 2006 we had landed B&N and Borders and were now picking up rep groups all over the country that were working with the independent stores.
By 2007 we started to win awards with the cream of the crop being the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold award. More awards followed and so did more distribution and more products.
In 2008 we launched a campaign to raise investment but it took a turn for the worse when the market crashed. We have struggled at times but we have made it through the worst of this economy. I hope and we are back to growing again.
We are hopefully less than a month away from announcing a TV game show version YBS and have a license agreement with ASU that will deliver an online version as well as an interactive whiteboard version for the classroom.
We got here through hard work, persistence, dedication and most of all a passion to create great games that all have an educational nature.
Lessons Learned:
- Be adaptable to the economy and fast.
- Don’t count on anyone other than your core people to make sure you succeed.
- Work smarter rather than longer so you can work…longer! Did I mention persistence?
- I have hired some people who were not who they said they were, and it cost me a small fortune to repair their mistakes.
- Get a good bookkeeper first.
- Work well with others and help them as they help you. It always pays off.
- Our greatest failure was to not be able to adapt to a crashing economy quickly enough. I should have let some people go sooner.”
McNeill Designs celebrates 5 year anniversary of charitable alliance
The innovative partnership between Success Won’t Wait and McNeill Designs began in 2005 when McNeill Designs principles committed themselves to using the company’s success to help support important charitable causes. Since 2005, McNeill Designs has donated a portion of sales of the language game “You’ve Been Sentenced!” to Success Won’t Wait, a not for profit organization that encourages reading — particularly by children — and provides free books to organizations and programs nationwide.
Founded in 2002, Success Won’t Wait is a Delaware-based organization that encourages reading by providing materials to those who need them most. Success Won’t Wait volunteers organize book drives by partnering with schools and universities, independent groups and organizations, and a variety of businesses, calling on residents to donate brand new and gently used books for redistribution in the community. To date, dozens of book drives have been held and almost a quarter of a million books have been collected and redistributed!
“Because You’ve been Sentenced! is inherently an educational game (as well as lots of fun), we wanted to partner with an well established organization that focused on reading and literacy as our beneficiary,” explains McNeill Designs Founder Don McNeill.
To learn more about Success Won’t Wait, visit http://successwontwaitinc.wordpress.com/
“Bewildering American caregiver Rachel Ray locked The Rolling Stones out with Zippy Zippers” … ummm, can you repeat that, please?
This Single Mama has a sense of humor! Jacqui, the founder of Single Mama recently agreed to host a family game night and test out sme of McNeill Designs’ games. An excerpt from her review is below. To read the full review or to enter to win a prize ackage filled with fabulous family games, visit Jacqui at Single Mama. CONTEST ENDS 2-18.
“No! This is not a courtroom! I had the chance to review this fantastic game. And let me tell you, with five of us playing, we had SO much fun! And the sentences that we came up with was great! Later in the review I am going to give you some of the sentences that we came up with. And make sure to pay attention to them, because the mandatory entry is for you to agree with my sentence! lol.
“You’ve Been Sentenced” is a delightful card game that allows you to come up with sentences from the ten cards that you pick out of the case! I am going to give a shout out to the state of Delaware where the company who designed this is located! We are small but mighty! This game is for up to 8 players and ages 8+. I went to play it with my daughter, but we didn’t have enough players. So I will have another game night when she is with me so she can enjoy it as well.
Each player will get to pick 10 cards. On each of these cards are words and different variations to use. Each of these words have a certain point value attached to them. The bigger or less commonly used word of course would be worth more. It takes approximately 45 minutes to play this game. Or if you have a player like my friend Derek who won in three hands. THREE HANDS!! Come on! Yeah, he was the king of the game that night as my sister said! I have a feeling I am going to have to ban him playing with us in the future, lol!
Some of the sentences we had were:
“Jason unexpectedly banned acting because her oily peeler was blended.” What??? lol. As long as the sentences are grammatically correct, they don’t necessarily have to make sense!
Another sentence we had was “Bewildering American caregiver Rachel Ray locked The Rolling Stones out with Zippy Zippers!.” OMG, we were laughing so hard with the sentences we came up with.
Now my sentence that I felt was good, but no one else liked 
“The classroom realistically sent the actor Ophelia for bistro.” What is wrong with this sentence other than the fact that Bistro is a type of place, not type of food. But come on! That was a great sentence!
I also received Twisted Fish to review and I will say, the pictures were twisted! But so funny we couldn’t stop laughing at that too! It was great! From their website:
13 unique Fish characters in five different colors, plus 8 unique “Zingers” that allow you to break the rules, makes “Twisted Fish” a unique game experience. The real challenge takes place when asking for the fish cards you are collecting—Now you have to be specific about the type of fish and color you are seeking. “Twisted Fish” challenges you to remember every question asked at the table. It is challenging and fun right down to the very last card!
We promise you’ll fall hook, line, and sinker! Twisted Fish offers laugh-out-loud fun for the entire family.”
The $30 Grocery Challenge site is meant to challenge you to live large on less. So we were thrilled with their positive reviews of our games — living large and having fun don’t have to mean breaking the bank! Read the full review below:
“We love game night in our house! So, when McNeil Designs wanted my feedback on 2 of their games I thought it sounded fun. My husband and I played You’ve been Sentenced which is a game based on a pretty simple concept. Players get dealt cards and then have to make sentences with the cards they have. The tough part is forming sentences that are grammatically correct and actually make sense! Let me tell you, it proved to be hilarious and so much fun! It’s the sort of game that you just can’t help but laugh and enjoy!
You’ve been Sentenced is such a diverse game that can easily accommodate a broad age range that it’s a real bargain at $24.95. School age children can learn how to form sentences while playing this game and they will never be the wiser that they are actually learning because it’s so much fun. But the neat part is, it’s really fun for adults too! I’ve never played a game before that could adapt to so many different age levels and still be fun!
McNeill Designs also has a card game called Twisted Fish . Priced at $10, this game puts a spin on the classic card game Go Fish by requiring players to be specific about the type of fish and color they are seeking. While I enjoyed You’ve been Sentenced more, I did think this game was fun and a great way to help kids learn colors, memorization and to encourage family involvement.”
