Spider-Man 2: Activity Pack (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

This item is actually an activity pack. It contains the 24-page B & W coloring book, the same as 87701, but numbered 87705 instead. It also contains a small pack of six colored pencils (black, purple, blue, green, red and brown), each about 3" in length. Plus, there is a half-sized "activity pad", which is about 5.25" x 8.25". There are 24 B & W newsprint pages in this one, too... just reproducing some of the pages from the activity book.

Like the bumper book and the wipe-clean book, this was also NZ$5.99 (US$3.60). So for double the price of the (over-priced) coloring book, you get a pack containing a coloring book, the pint-sized activity book, and the small pencils. The mix is pretty good (it's the same combination from the 2002 Funtastic activity pack, except that there's an extra two pencils this time), but the individual components are rather uninspiring.

Overall Rating

Better value than the coloring book by itself, but still rather poor quality; let's call it a slightly sub-standard 2.5 webs.