There's two things I look for in a handy-dandy take-anywhere book. First, I wanna be able to color. Secondly, the carrying aspect is vitally important.
That's why I was thrilled when Elmer's Products, Inc. produced this "Spider-Man color-N-carry" book! You can color it, and you can carry it. That's just perfect for me, when I want portability in a private or mass-transit capacity, combined with the capacity for easy chromatic adjustment!
There's a few different versions of this product offered for sale. I have the 2007 and 2011 versions. There's also a 2008 edition that I haven't managed to get my hands on yet.
In any case, at least the 2007 and 2011 versions are the same but different. They both feature a combination product with a 72-page tear-off activity pad on the front side. The rear is constructed as a box containing six chunky felt markers - including Purple, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green. Everything you need for Spider-Man, the Hulk, and... early Daredevil in his yellow costume?
There is a cardboard carry handle on the top. The front cover is card, and it folds over to protect the activity pad, sealing with a magnetic clip which does a nice job of protecting while also offering easy access.
Finally, the two halves actually open up to show a glossy game board for the "Save the City" game. That's a variant of the old solitaire game where you jump over tokens to remove them, trying to finish with just one token remaining on the board.
The artwork on the pad is black/white/grey, and generally is very crisp and clear. The puzzles are word games, mazes, spot-the-difference, plus some Mad Libs, join-the-dots and so on. For a pad that is only 5" x 5", the designers have worked hard to fill out some interesting content.
There is a little bit of overlap between the 2007 and 2011 editions in terms of content. I spotted some of the more generic pages had been recycled, but not many. Most of the word games are new for the later edition.
It's hard to know how to rate many of these coloring toys. Often I look to see if they seem like good value-for-money, but that's a little tough this time since there's no RRP on the boxes.
So I'm going to judge these Giddy-Up "Color-N-Carry" packs purely on their intrinsic merits. On the plus side, the felt pens have a decent range of colors, and are of good quality. There's nothing particularly interesting about the contents of the activity pad, but there are plenty of pages, and the production quality is high.
The overall appearance and concept is novel, and well-constructed. This is at the better end of the "generic Spidey activity pad" products, so I'm gonna give it three point five webs.