SLAMWICH

Winner of an Oppenheim Best Toy Award, this delightful Gamewright card game is as intellectually tasty as it is hilariously unappetizing. Forty-four cards in the bread-shaped deck are nine separate elements of sandwich fare: one card portrays a lettuce leaf, another shows tomatoes, a third offers a smear of peanut butter, a fourth depicts egg slices, and so on. After the cards are dealt, players lay them down on a central pile (Peanut butter on top of eggs?! Gross!) to construct a card-sandwich that can be won in several different ways. If you see a pair of elements, or a “sandwich” of matching elements–for example, lettuce, pickles, then lettuce again–you slam your hand on the food pile and keep the cards. There are also three “thief” cards to stop (i.e., smack!) and eight devilish “muncher” cards, which demand that you get a pair or a “sandwich” while laying down a specified number of cards or you lose your grub. Slamwich takes about 20 minutes to play, and is deeply pleasurable for young ones, and pretty darned amusing for adults, too. Slamwich is for two to six players.

Packaging may vary.