Marvel Super Heroes: Connect 'n' Color #08603 (Artistic Studios)

Background

The "Connect 'n' Color" in this product's title refers to the "Wacky Stack" Crayon – the plastic pen bundled with the product, and which is formed from five individual segments each of which contains the stub of a crayon. Simply rotate the segments to access one of the other colors.

I love product gimmicks, and this one is pretty nifty – except for the fact that the crayons are short and blunt, hence rendering them not particularly idea for coloring small pictures like the ones included here.

Story Details

The entire product packaging is 5.8" x 9.9". But the actual body of the product (i.e. the drawing pages bound with a plastic spiral) are only 5.8" x 7.3". That's not particularly large, and so the drawings are a bit cramped and hence unsuitable for younger kids.

There are only 24 single-sided pages in the pad. There are coloring pages, join-the-dots, mazes and a few letter puzzles.

General Comments

The main problem here is that the Wacky Stack crayons are entirely inappropriate for the content. The mazes and join-the-dots require a pencil or pen, not some big fat chunky crayon. Similarly the coloring pages all contain lots of tiny detail which would much be better suited to a fine marker or colored pencil.

The artwork itself is pretty good, being clean line art on high quality white paper stock. But it's impossible to get around the absolute mismatch between the artwork and the provided drawing materials.

Overall Rating

These products are designed in San Francisco. Somebody is presumably well-paid for specifying these products. So how does something like this get shipped out the door without an ounce of common-sense being applied?

All of the components in this product are superb quality. But the combination of fat crayons with detailed drawings is fundamentally ludicrous. Somebody needs to be fired.

One Web.