MouthOff, ustwo

The fun with MouthOff starts with the icon on your phone: Unlike the usual "tile-shaped" look and feel, the designers of this game have cleverly used the color scheme to make it appear as if there's a little alien creature peaking at you from in between the other icons. It makes it very easy to find, and my daughter giggles whenever she sees him. Click on our friend Mr. Spaceman and the phone immediately launches a home page, in horizontal mode (holding your phone sideways). Your choices are "signature mouths" or "original mouths;" click on one and you are presented with an illustrated gallery of tiles.

But what a weird gallery!! It's made up of 25 mouths. A tooth-filled shark mouth, like you found with Bruce in Little Mermaid, a jowly dog mouth, a mouth that looks like it's a set of false teeth, a robot mouth that looks a bit like Bender. But then the magic begins: choose one, hold it up in front of your mouth (facing outwards) and start talking. The mouth moves along with your words. It's inexplicable, and hilarious. I had to pry my phone out of my daughter's hand, as she sat in front of a mirror, trying each one and singing a little song. It's also the first app that made my husband laugh, which gives it a gold star in my book. Finally, this is one of those apps that showcases the iPhone's endless lists of random functions (linking sound to action) and is just plain fun. People are even making videos of themselves using the phones; that says it all really doesn't it? http://tinyurl.com/yeuosa5

You'll like it because: It really is funny, and the "mouths" cover an extremely creative range of options.
Too bad: The joke gets old eventually.

iPhone Apps users gave it 3/5 stars
Cost: Lite version for FREE, full version for £0.59

Ages: All ages.