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Went in for a Happy Meal and walked out with the unexpected happy memories of Top Trumps 😊. In this blogpost I will share with you details on how easy it is to play the game that will help you create wonderful memories with your friends and family.

As our daughter gets older, her love for junk food also evolves at an exponential rate (I swear she takes that after her mother in so many ways). We have to stick to “Junk Food Nights” only for the weekends. Her favorite go-to is Mc Donalds and their Chicken Happy Meal. I think she mostly has it for the “free toy” but to be fair she does wolf the entire meal down, so I guess she does like it.

Recently I went to get her favorite meal from Mc Donalds and as I placed the usual order, I wasn’t paying attention to the free toy displayed in the nearby cabinet so when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised when she came to me asking what “Top Trumps” are?

For a moment my mind went blank. Seeing that I was stuck in buffering land, she then placed the pack of Top Trumps in my hands and it all suddenly clicked. Oh! “Top Trumps” I had not heard that name or seen a deck in ages. Seriously though the last time I played a deck was when I was like 8, I think.

Here’s the recent collaboration between Mc Donalds and Top Trumps, wherein you are given a chance to collect a total 8 decks.

What is Top Trumps Card Game?

Top Trumps claims it to be UK’s No. 1 card game which quiet honestly I wouldn’t deny. It is generally played between 2-6 people as one deck contains 30 cards that should be evenly distributed among them. The objective of the game is simple, one player needs to get all the opponent’s cards. The theme of each deck varies as it could be about animals, birds, places, people, sports, cars, star wars etc. Each deck has a list of numerical data (stats) that are unique for that deck.

For example: If the deck is about animals, then each card would have 4 to 5 stats on it ranging from Size, Weight, Sight, Brains, etc. If the deck was about cars, then the stats would be like Horsepower, Engine Size, Top Speed, O to 60 times, etc.

Now one important thing to note is that these decks are meant to be fun while also claiming to be educational card game for children when it comes to amazing facts. They call it “Camouflaged Learning”. Read more about it on their Classics Page.

However you might want to take the numerical values on these cards with a grain of salt because sometimes the information associated with them is arbitrary.

For instance if you are playing with a deck that has animals on them, some stats like size and sight don’t have any actual valid information as a number is assigned to them to make the game fun (like you can see in the cards below)

What I mean is that if this was a Discovery channel documentary about the same animals you would get valid information on them like, this animal can see up to a distance of “x” miles or weighs “x” number of pounds. They also don’t mention where they got their numbers from. So just keep that in mind.

How do you play Top Trumps Game

The game is quite simple and fun to play.

1. Simply take the deck out give it a good shuffle and each person gets dealt one card at a time until all the cards have been evenly dealt. Keep in mind that the cards need to be dealt face down.
2. Once the players get their respective stack of cards, they can only turn the top card to start the game. The order of who goes first is left up to the players, either flip for it or take turns.
3. Now when you flip your first card over you can see your card you are presented with 4 to 5 options (stats) that you can choose from. The general idea is to pick your highest stat and go with that, but you have no idea what your opponent’s card stats are so you don’t know if what you have is good enough to win or not.
4. If the stat that you picked is higher than your opponent’s, then you get to keep their card and you move those two cards to the back of your deck and you turn over the next card and continue your turn.
5. If your opponent’s card was better than yours, then they take your card, and it’s their turn next.
6. On the off chance that both of you have the same stat number resulting in a tie (draw) then those two cards are put down in a pile and the other player gets a go to try to win, if they succeed in doing so, they not only get the cards that were played but also the cards in the pile as well.
7. The game keeps going until one player has successfully collected all their opponent’s cards.

This game is known to have high swings and comebacks are quite common. Some games can be short, while some can take a while. So be on the lookout for anything.

The deck that was packed in with my daughter’s Happy Meal was “Night Animals” this was 1 of the possible 8 decks that we could collect. The deck contained 36 playing cards and 1 instruction card. The instructions were clear and simple but were incomplete as they had no information on the odd chance if there was a tie. Luckily since I have played the game before there wasn’t any need to look up the rules but something to keep in mind for future collabs (Mc Donalds & Top Trumps)

The 4 stats in this deck were Size, Brains, Sight & Uniqueness. They also had some exciting facts for each animal as well.

Overall, my daughter and I had a blast playing this and it was a total rollercoaster of a ride for us. She ended the last game by asking me when we are going to Mc Donalds again? To which I just sheepishly smiled knowing full well there were at least 7 more trips to be done. You got to collect them all right? We even played at Mc Donalds while waiting for are food.

Since she loved the game so much, I brought another pack from Amazon which was based on Cats. Yes you guessed it right, she loves cats. This particular one I like more because it comes with a case so that makes it very easy to store and carry along for our outdoors.

They are available in a set of 3 (around $25 depending on the sets) and individually as well (around $8) it might even fall cheaper for you if its free shipping.

Do let us know what your experience was like if you do happen to pick this up.

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