Ad disclosure: This product was sent to us free of charge for the purpose of this review, and represents our honest opinion of the product.
Product: Belly Bashimi
Price: £17.99
Age Range: 7 years+
Manufacturer’s Description: Become a sumo sashimi sensei with the hilarious Belly Bashimi! Scatter the sushi discs, strap on your belly and step into the ring. One player spins the sushi spinner to figure out which sushi disc you put your feet on. Once your feet are planted, try to bounce your opponent out of the ring with your big belly and become the sumo champion! Best of three rounds wins! Are you ready to sumo?
Rating: (3/5 stars) Review: This is the kind of game that you can’t take seriously at all – and the kind that gets pulled out of the cupboard at parties for guests of all ages. It’s totally silly and chaotic, and the girls – plus a special guest who popped over for the afternoon during half term – loved putting it through it’s paces. Belly Bashimi is a sumo themed game, with inflatable bellies you strap on, a sumo ring to bounce around in, and sushi to scatter on the floor. Yes, it’s as bonkers as it sounds. The aim of the game is to bounce your opponent off their sushi tiles and out of the ring. In the box you get the foam ring (which you slot together), sushi tiles, a sushi spinner, two inflatable sumo bellies with waist straps, and an instruction leaflet. To play the game, you put the ring together and lay it on the floor, scatter the sushi tiles inside the ring, and strap on your inflated belly. Each player takes turns to use the spinner and place a foot on the indicated type of sushi. Once both feet are planted on the ground – often in totally unsteady spots – it’s time to take turns to try and unbalance your opponent by bouncing your bellies together. If they stay on their tiles, they get a turn to bounce into you. The first person to bounce their opponent of their tiles gets a point, and it’s best of 3 to find the winner. The three girls – and James – had a great time attempting to bounce each other out of the ring and off their sushi tiles! It was hilarious to watch. I would recommend making sure you have a good amount of space to play this – we were a bit nervous about our TV being bounced into! We had a few issues getting the ring to lie flat as the foam pieces were so bent from being in the box, but by lining up the curves and stretching them out a bit we did manage to end up with a (slightly misshapen) fairly flat ring. My other main issue is that the waist straps, which attach to the bellies with velcro, aren’t at all adjustable and don’t stay put unless your waist is exactly the right size. Both Lydia and James had to hold onto it, and it only just stayed up on Georgie’s waist. At £17.99 it does seem a touch expensive for what you get considering these issues, but it was very fun. We give Belly Bashimi 3 stars – it’s totally daft and could be improved, but they had a lot of laughs.
