The cards did not match the cards shown in the photograph (which is why i purchased them). If you are selling a newer version of the product (with lower quality cardstock) you should make that clear as the seller. Disappointed as I had purchased these for a visual project.

great

Looked promising: colorful, recognizable objects on the cards, the familiar "I Spy" moniker. What could go wrong?

The numbers just don't work out.

The main gameplay: 48 cards, 24 pairs that share matching objects. You decide the cards amongst the players face down. Then each round all players simultaneously flip up a card. If there are two that match, the player that identifies this first calls out the matched objects and then wins all of those cards. No match? Another round, and everyone flips again until there is a match.

Problem is, with 24 unique pairs, the probability of a player flipping up a card that matches another's in any round is painfully small. More often than not you wind up flipping up all of your cards without there ever being a match: not fun.

You can salvage this by just playing the 'memory game', where you spread out all the cards face down, and take turns flipping two at a time until you find a match.

Apparently there is yet another way to play, but the instructions included in our set were flawed. There were two double-sided instruction cards included, numbered 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4. We had one card, labeled appropriately 1/4 on one side and 2/4 on the other. The second card had one side labeled 2/4 and was in Spanish, and one side labeled 4/4. So basically we did not have page 3/4 of the instructions, as it was misprinted as page 2/4 in Spanish. Go figure.

Ultimately the printing of the instructions was about as well executed as the attention to the entertainment of gameplay.

Conclusion: worth maybe 50¢ if you can find it at a garage sale.

My husband and I play it with our special needs 5 year old, its makes him concentrate and he always has fun. I have fun too, but my husband is the reigning champ. Its not messy, doesn't use batteries and never gets old. Best played with 3 or more players.

Arrived as described!