Amazing Spider-Man: Bumper Sticker Activity (Parragon/Scholastic)

Background

This "Amazing Spider-Man Bumper Sticker Activity" book (including Games, Stories, Play Set) is one of a range of activity books co-released by Parragon (in the UK) and Scholastic Australia (in Australia/NZ).

Story Details

This book is quite substantial. It is 8.5" x 10.6" and is about a quarter-inch (6mm) thick. In addition, there is also a plastic "Disc Shooter" attached to the front of the book, incorporating five plastic discs, plus a small finger-powered launcher.

The cover is a shiny, reflective cardboard, adding to the perceived value. That value proposition just gets better and better as we look inside and find 112 richly-coloured pages featuring:

A wide range of activities... far too numerous to list. Basically, every combination of mazes, puzzles, games, fact files, prompted writing, prompted drawing, just... everything.

Buried in those 112 pages is also a complete reprint of the story The Amazing Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus (Origin Storybook).

In addition - as a gatefold on the front cover there's a removable cardboard Spider-Man face mask. And as a gatefold on the back cover is a "playset", or a set of push-out stand-up cardboard play figures of Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus. There's a couple of sheets of stickers too. Naturally.

General Comments

I really don't feel I have done justice to the variety of content in this book. It truly is a "Bumper" book. Sure, much the content has been assembled and rebuilt out of existing components, particularly the artwork from the Marvel: Origin Story Books, and some of the line art from the Marvel Color/Activity (Scholastic Australia) series of colouring and activity books.

But the rich quality of the reproduction, and the sheer variety of material incorporated into this product combine to give an impression that somebody really went to a bit of effort here. Combine that with the sturdy, glossy cover and the generous extras (mask, figures, stickers, disc shooters) and it all adds up to one of the most impressive Spider-Man activity books of the past few years.

Overall Rating

A top-notch effort. High quality, plenty of variety, lots of extras, at a very reasonable price.

As for the fact that the content is assembled from various other previous places, well... "Steal from one source, that's plagiarism. Steal from many, and that's research".

Four and a half webs.