Spider-Man 2: Wipe Clean Book (Funtastic)

Background

Funtastic brought out a swag of coloring and activity books back in 2002 for the first movie - the usual mix of jumbo coloring pads, sticker books and such like, but also including a tattoo book and a paint-with-water book. Sadly, the rather disappointing art they decided to use last time really overshadowed any high points that the format may have provided.

For "Spider-Man 2", Funtastic is back with new art and even more nifty formats. As your devoted reviewer, I headed down to my local Warehouse (the NZ equivalent of Wal-Mart) and picked up one of each of the different books I can find. And here they are. Note that Funtastic appears to be an Australian company. I'm not sure if these books will make it to the US If they don't, then please accept my condolences. If you get something else instead, please drop me a line and let me know...

Story Details

The "wipe clean book" is the first in this series that moves away from the B & W newsprint. Instead, we get a glorious shiny card, which can take felt-pen and then be wiped clean. There're only 12 pages, but what lovely pages they are. There's color on some of the pages, plus borders and a few backgrounds. Somebody has actually taken some time and care with the graphics side of things.

The pages are mostly activities, and you have to wonder just how much fun doing a crossword a second time will be, or a maze. I guess you can wipe it clean and lend it to a friend. Or you could put the book down and come back a couple of months later and do the activies again. Heck, with my memory, maybe I could enjoy doing the crossword twice a day!

My shop was asking NZ$5.99 for this book (US$3.60), the same as the bumper coloring book. While twelve pages is a heck of a lot less than the 128 pages in the bumper book, there really is such a striking step up in quality for this book that it makes up for the difference in size. Plus, of course, you can re-use these 12 pages as often as you wish.

Overall Rating

Let's balance all the factors out, and call this one three webs too.