Training Games: Rhino Hero Junior

June 24, 2021

This is part of a series called Training Games, where I review children's games when playing (with modified rules) with my twin toddlers. This review was written when my twins were 21 months old.

We received a free copy of Rhino Hero Junior from HABA when my toddlers were 20 months, and I let them unbox and unpunch it. The game comes with a lot of thick cardboard pieces, which my kids loved punching out. One also enjoys putting the pieces back into the punchboard, so I’ve saved some punchboard for that.


There are many modes to the actual game Rhino Hero Junior, but there are different 3D floors that you put together using two cardboard pieces, and you can stack them with the roof pieces. Each floor is two different colors that match with the floors above and below, and each floor also has a certain number of birds on it (matching the floor number). For playing with my kids, I just try to get them to find and match the colors. They also saw me put the 3D floors together, so sometimes they try to assemble them together.

Trying to get the floor assembled

Now that my kids have been "playing' board games for a while, they also like taking components out of the boxes and putting them away by themselves. Rhino Hero Junior is one of the few games where I can let them do that by themselves without worrying about the safety of them or the components, which is a big relief for me when they choose to grab that game!

Gotta make sure you put away that punchboard first

But also since they have a large selection of games to choose from now, they don't choose Rhino Hero Junior too much. I'm not sure if it's because they associate it more with just unboxing, or if the pieces aren't as exciting to them, since when they're in the box it's just a bunch of flat cardboard pieces. But the other day one of them did decide to choose it, and he was actually trying to stack the tower pieces!

He stacked this all by himself!

Chew Test
  • Rhino and Monkey: 4/5 - good quality wooden pieces, but could probably fit in the mouth
  • Walls and Roofs: 4/5 - very thick cardboard and large pieces

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