Marvel Super Heroes 3D Activity Centre (Parragon/Scholastic)

Background

This hardback square-spine folder collection is the sibling product to the Amazing Spider-Man: 3D Activity Centre (Parragon/Scholastic). Both have an external hard cardboard cover, with a spiral ring-binder inside.

This book is available in the UK (published by Parragon) and in Australia/NZ (published by Scholastic). U.S. fans can buy on Amazon and have it shipped to them from the UK.

Story Details

The book itself is 10.25" x 11.5". It has "filofax" tabbed section separators.

The first of the five sections is "Story". This appears to be a reprint of the X-Men story from the Marvel: Origin Story Books. Some of the pages have been converted to 3D for use with the supplied red/blue glasses. Spider-Man doesn't appear at all in the story.

Section two is "Activities". This is a decent enough section, with 32 pages of colouring and activity pages. Mostly it's X-Men and Iron Man, but Spidey makes a couple of cameo appearances. The paper is nice quality and there's some full-color components on some of the pages to add variety to the black and white line art. As usual in this series, nearly of the material is shared with many of the other Parragon/Scholastic books.

Section three is "Press & Play". Here is a press-out cardboard "Mobile", some press-out "bookmarks", a press-out super-hero mask (Hulk one side, Iron Man the other), and a press-out "door hanger".

Up until this point, things weren't looking so bad. But suddenly, I guess the creative time ran out of time and/or money. Section four is titled "Make-Your-Own Amazing Adventure", and it consists of... blank pieces of paper.

I was disappointed - until I saw section five... "Scrapbook". That also consists of nothing but blank pieces of paper! Then I was angry.

General Comments

Honestly, what were these guys thinking? This product carries a premium $14 price tag... and yet two out of the five sections just consist of blank paper! What a scam!

There's a single sheet of stickers at the back of the book, which feels like adding insult to injury.

Overall Rating

This product is nothing but an kick in the teeth to comic book fans. Recycled material and half blank! Somebody must have double-dared the creators of this product to see how far they could go without getting arrested.

Half a web. Call the police!