Spider-Sense Spider-Man: Travel Activity Pad (Crayola)

Background

Here's another Crayola Spider-Man coloring/activity book that I stumbled across while killing time in Auckland Airport. It is 11.5" x 8" with a staple-bound cover, and it has 32 super-clean, super-white pages. Nice paper!

Story Details

Inside is some high-quality line-art pictures featuring Spidey, Kraven, Rhino, Mysterio, Lizard, Sandman, Black Cat, Vulture, Prowler, and Green Goblin. There's some puzzles too, with the answers given on the inside back cover.

I'm sure I've seen many of these poses and pictures before at some stage. Certainly the Lizard and Black Cat pictures have turned up before (in books by Bendon, if my memory serves me right). Mind you, the line art here is so clean and accurate on this high-quality paper stock that the pictures look a whole notch higher in quality than the did on the newsprint paper that I've previously seem them published on.

To add to the high-quality feel, there's also a set of seven felt-tipped markers in the front of the book, in a re-usable storage tray. There's a sensible range of colors too, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Grey, Brown and Black. No purple, which makes it a bit tricky to color Mysterio's cape and the Goblin's hood. But still, it's a decent mix otherwise.

General Comments

All this quality does carry a solid $12 price tag. But Crayola does good stuff, and I think it's a safe bet that the felt-tips are decent quality. Add the nice paper stock and a premium for buying in an airport, and I guess that's not too unreasonable a sticker price.

Overall Rating

On the downside, the page count is low and the price is high. And yes the content is recycled from existing sources, but the Crayola team have definitely done a very nice job of cleaning up and presenting the line art.

I'm a sucker for high-quality products, and given the crisp clean look and feel of this high-end product, there's no way I can give this any less than a perfectly decent three-and-a-half web rating.