It would feel cheap and easy to discuss the MonkeyGram iPhone app by dousing this review in monkey puns. So I’m not going to do that, but I’d like to get one out of the way quickly and say that if you have young children who like to play with your iPhone, they will go bananas for this app. MonkeyGram lets users create short, silly, interactive greeting cards and either post them to Facebook or Twitter or email/text them to their friends. It keeps its aim simple and succeeds thanks to its ease of use and light-hearted nature.
About the only fear someone could reasonably have with an app like MonkeyGram is that it’s going to be some sort of in-app purchase speed-trap where you download a free app and suddenly your kids have downloaded $100 in greeting cards. While that is a possibility in the long-term, MonkeyGram gives users enough credits to purchase three free postcard styles, which they can use indefinitely from that point on. That means if you buy the beach scene postcard once, you can keep on using that basic format when you create your custom postcard, rather than having to re-purchase it for each new creation.
Past that non-issue, MonkeyGram works very intuitively. It guides users on a step-by-step process for their postcard creation even letting the creator put real faces in place of the monkey’s mugs if they want. Users can also select music for the interactive card and then record audio and move the characters on the postcard around to create a scene of sorts. You’re not going to be able to remake Citizen Kane with MonkeyGram, but you can probably make a kid laugh a bit.
If you have children in your life that you’d love to share a silly, fun activity with, MonkeyGram is an ideal way to go. It’s by no means a serious app, and that’s probably the best thing about it.
