Ten Reasons Why You Should Not Buy Mousetrap, the Milton Bradley Game

1. Difficult Instructions
Playing Mousetrap consists of setting up a complex series of chain reactions (turning a crack pulls a rubber band that snaps a piece into place to knock over a small bucket with a marble in it, etc.) in order to drop a small plastic cage onto another player’s mouse. This means that you spend the bulk of game play trying to sort through the instructions to figure out how you’re supposed to build the next part of the Mousetrap. This can be challenging or frustrating for young or impatient players who just want to get on with the fun instead of trying to puzzle through instructional diagrams.

2. No Rewards For Mastery
Unfortunately for those who wish to get on with the fun, there’s not much fun to get on with. Once you’ve mastered the task of building the Mousetrap itself, you’ll find there’s nothing else to the game except hoping you roll lucky numbers. The only reward for learning how to build the Mousetrap is that in future rounds, you’ll simply be bored instead of frustrated.

3. No Creativity
To successfully win at Mousetrap, you’ve got to put all creative thoughts out of your head and do nothing but follow the instructions throughout the game. A lot of the fun of building things is deciding what goes where, but Mousetrap takes all that fun out of it by telling you the exact order and placement for every single piece of the trap.

4. No Strategy
There’s no such thing as a player who is good at Mousetrap, because there’s absolutely no strategy involved. Winning Mousetrap depends entirely on luck. This is a plus if you’re playing with a mixture of kids and adults, because everyone is on equal footing, but it also means that after you’ve all played a few rounds, the novelty will wear off, and you’re likely to stow Mousetrap away in the garage on a high shelf and switch to a game that has a bit more substance.