Spider-Man "Spider-Sense" Coloring & Activity Pad

Background

Bendon Publishing have held a license to produce Spider-Man coloring and activity books for the past six years or so. In that time, they have shifted styles at least twice. They started with a generic "Spider-Man" look, before swapping to the "Spider-Sense Spider-Man" logo. They also jumped over to join in the Marvel Super Hero Squad trend for a bit.

Now with this set of three coloring & activity pads (sold only as a set), they're back to the "Spider-Sense" logo once more.

Story Details

The pads are soft-bound, 5.25" x 7.75", stapled at the top. There are 32 pages in each pad, perforated at the top for easy tearing out. The paper is cheap newsprint, and the content is black and white only.

The pads are sold only as a set of three. There is no ISBN indicated anywhere on the book.

Inside is artwork and puzzles from the same pool as the earlier Bendon Spider-Sense activity books, such as Spider-Man "Spider-Sense" Coloring/Activity (288pp, Bendon) and half a dozen others. There's nothing really to differentiate these books from each other.

The actual contents of each of the three variants of this pad (red text, blue text and green text) are different, but identical in style, mix and appearance. There is no storyline, just a mix of artwork to color, along with word puzzles, code puzzles, mazes and such-like.

General Comments

Being so "generic", these books are very difficult to rate. Essentially, an evaluation is simply a comparison of production quality against price.

While the paper is low-grade, the print reproduction is high and the line art is cleanly defined. I don't know what the original recommended retail price was, but I can see a set on eBay now for US$5.99. That seems pretty fair.

Overall Rating

In summary, these pads are cheap, light, simple and portable. As entertainment for kids, they probably do the job, when the Nintendo has flat batteries.

On the other hand, like so many books in this market segment, they're lacking any soul or spark which might possibly make them appeal to collectors like me.

I give 'em a "does the job just fine" three web rating.