Spider-Man 3: Activity Kit (Meredith)

Background

Wow! This neatly-crafted activity kit packs a punch. From the front it's 10" x 10", but it's 1" deep and full of all sorts of little bits and pieces. Stickers, stamps, pens, plus all sorts of bits of cardboard for games. Tucked away inside you'll also find 32-page full-color booklet which is 5.25" x 9.5" with a soft card cover.

Story Details

As promised, there are at least a dozen small sheets of Spidey stickers. There's four tiny felt pens, plus six tiny rubber stamps and four iddy-biddy stamp pads to provide some ink for the stamps. There's some separate bits of shiny card which (I'm guessing) you can write on with felt pen and then erase to use again.

Among those shiny game cards there's a pair of cards for playing the "Spidey Sense Game" (aka Battleships). There's a Spidey hangman word-guessing card, another card with red and blue dots for some triangle game or similar, and a card with a plastic spinner that is for some other game.

Let's open up the instruction book and find out what's in there. There's puzzles, join-the-dots, mazes, lots of word games, and some places to stick some of the stickers. There's a "Rooftop Rumble" game that uses the spinner, and instructions for eight or nine different two-player games you can play.

General Comments

To be fair, there's not quite as much in here as it seems. There's lots of air behind the bright red molded plastic tray. But even so, it's clear that somebody has gone to some effort to assemble a good combination of stuff and make a nice job of presenting it. There's lots of original material in here, and that's worth bonus points in my book.

The activity kit is branded with the "Spider-Man 3" movie logo, but it doesn't use any film stills or tie to any characters. Sandman is in there, but it's not the actual actor from the film. In that sense, it's a pretty gratuitous tie-in - but I don't really feel that detracts from the overall pleasing effect of the bundle.

Overall Rating

This is a bright and creative activity kit, and full credit to the guy who designed it. At US$15 it's not cheap at all, but if you're looking for something a bit special and a bit more impressive than a $3 coloring book, then this may well be what you're wanting. Four webs.