Amazing Spider-Man: Colouring Sticker Activity Pack (Parragon)

Background

This is a very slender "Colouring, Sticker Activity Pack" from Parragon. As far as I'm aware, it was only available in the UK. There was one version originally released in 2013, and a second in 2015.

Story Details

The product has a low quality, single-side printed cardboard cover 8.4" x 11.4".

Attached to the front is a pack of six small coloured pencils - Yellow, Blue, Light Green, Pink, Dark Green and Red. The choice of pencil colour is immediately rather laughable. Two shades of green? Pink? What, we're supposed to colour the Green Goblin in Pink and Green? Seriously... how about a Purple instead of Pink? And a Black instead of the second Green?

Update: The 2015 re-release includes only four pencils. Red, Blue, Dark Green and Purple. I guess they figured the second green and the pink weren't adding much benefit.

Inside the cover is a single tiny sheet (6.5" x 4.25") of equally tiny stickers. There's also a stapled-in booklet (slightly smaller than the cardboard cover) of 12 pages of colouring and activity.

General Comments

The activity pages are based on the same artwork that we have seen in dozens of other Spider-Man colouring/activity books from Parragon and Scholastic, recycled ad nauseum.

This book contains a mixture of "coloring" pages and "games" pages. The colouring is fine. Unfortunately, most of the games are fundamentally flawed, in one of two ways. Either the games require you to use the stickers (meaning that they can only be played once). Or else they're just terminally stupid.

In particular, it always amazes me when an activity book provides a dedicated page and special markings so that you can play "tic tac toe". Apart from the fact that tic tac toe (aka Noughts and Crosses in the UK) is a pointless game (if you start in the middle and don't make a dumb mistake, every game ends in a draw), I have to ask what the possible value add might be in this page. If I have a pencil and paper, I can play tic tac toe. Who needs a coloring book to help them to make a 3x3 grid?

*sigh*

There's a couple of "roll the dice (dice not included) and follow the random instructions to see who randomly wins" game pages. But the final insult is a "memory game" to find the matching pairs. All you need is another sheet of paper (not provided) and scissors (not provided) then you can play the "memory matching game" where the pairs of characters are printed on the page and never move, rendering the game about as entertaining as learning to remember your new phone number.

Overall Rating

This book promises very little, and delivers it. This book weighs next to nothing with its meagre 12 pages, some thin card, and six tiny pencils (four in the re-release). My expectations were very low to begin with, so I can't really say I was disappointed.

The printed price is £3.99 (approximately USD $6.50 at current exchange rates). That's terribly expensive for what you get. Could Parragon really not afford to bump up the page count and give this book a bit more substance? On the other hand, the included game pages are so awful, increasing the page count could possibly have made this book even worse!

One Web.

Footnote

And really, whoever chose the colors for the pencils needs to be fired. Pink? Seriously?