Mookie Classic Swingball > Reviews (6)

I bought this for the garden at my mum's house about a year ago as we were planning a BBQ where a lot of the kids in the family were going to be attending so we wanted gamese etc. to keep them amused. I remember playing with a similar garden toy when I was a child and finding it mildly enjoyable which is why I opted for a Mookie Swingball toy.

I bought it online for £19.99 which wasn't exactly what I would call cheap so I expected this toy to be very good quality and I hoped it would grab the attention of the kids when they came over. The toy consists of a long blue pole which you stand in the ground, it then has a string mechanism thingy (I can't think of a better way to describe it) which has a tennis ball attached to the end of it and once you hit the ball with the bat it will twirl round and round the pole and the challenge is to keep hitting the ball so that it doesn't stop spinning around the pole.

The 2 bats that come with the toy were good enough, not too thin but not too heavy either so I was pleased with that. The first problem we found though when the kids started playing with this is that after batting the ball with a lot of power a few times, the pole would gradually slope to one side coming looser and looser from the ground. So we had to keep pushing the pole as far into the ground as it would go, a bit of a nuisance having to keep re-adjusting it to be honest. The kids did enjoy playing with this at first but the novelty soon wore off and they stopped playing with it completely in less than 20 minutes or so, so it clearly wasn't that exciting.

The swingball game can be played either in pairs or by yourself which I suppose it good if their is nobody else to play with. I did have a go myself and couldn't see the excitement in it at all, it was a very boring game to play even for me (I love playing tennis). The only great benefit I can see of it is it could possibly improve a childs hand-eye coordination skills, that is if you can keep the child interested in it long enough. I probably wouldn't have been so dissappointed with it if I had paid less, but I wish I'd spent my £20 on something else! I've spent pennies on Outdoor games that are ten times as interesting as this.