Girlie Flair For Girlie Hair
Written: Apr 21 '07
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Pros: Interesting designs, includes hair accessories, great for creative kids.
Cons: No colored pencils or markers, assembly of hair trinkets required.
The Bottom Line: How can they call it an activity kit when it doesn't include markers or colored pencils???
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| Freak369's Full Review: Spin Master Toys Shrinky Dinks Hair Fashion Activi... |
Hair fashion. There's a new term for me. I guess it was evitable that Annabelle would get into the silly but interesting world of Shrinky Dinks. When I broke out the Spin Master Shrinky Dinks Oven she went into what can only be described as a state between a sugar induced state and that of a zombie. "Wait, you mean I can make my own Shrinkies in that?" That should have served as a warning; I should have used better judgment and never even dragged the box out of the attic but no I had some deep rooted need for hearing a little girl endlessly pester me about going to the store to get more Shrinkie sheets. Fate, being the fickle woman that she is, had bigger and better plans for me than just blank sheets of plastic. No, she had a small section of official Shrinky Dink products neatly arranged on an end cap display. The boxes were all beat to hell and back but the $1.50 price tag made it impossible for me to walk past it without grabbing more than a few boxes.
Spin Master Toys Shrinky Dinks Hair Fashion Activity Kit
What's the difference between this and the Shrinky Dink Hair Fashion Kit? 12 piece of flair and about three dollars. The display had several different types of Shrinky Dink kits so I didn’t pass up the chance to get an assortment. If nothing else, it would be something fun to do when it's 105 degrees outside because, you know, nothing is more fun in the dead of summer than making Shrinky Dinks [did you catch that sarcasm?] Needless to say, this is a 100% girlie set; I doubt any little boy would want to even touch the box unless he was trying to make something for a girlfriend. Looking back on it, I am surprised that my oldest didn't make a ton of these for his sweetie. It is a nice well rounded activity but it does require a good bit of parental supervision. In some ways I'm not exactly the best role model for this type of thing because I am way to impatient and rip out the embossing gun and start heating them up by hand.
So what do you get with this activity set? Well, if you are a fan of the old school Shrinky Dinks, you may get a little bit of a shock with this one. Why? Well, instead of getting preprinted sheets you get templates that you put under the plastic sheets and you trace out what you want on the Shrinkies. Seems like the cheap way out if you ask me. I guess in some ways it lets kids have some creativity when they are making these but for younger kids, it means even more work for parents. Can you imagine a guy buying this for his daughter and thinking all he has to do is cut out the image once she's colored it only to find out that he has to help draw everything out first. What kind of images come with this set? The usual girlie things; butterflies, hearts, stars, flowers, smiley faces and a couple cute teddy bears. There isn’t a lot of detail to them and drawing out the images isn't complicated but it gets a little time consuming when you have a mini dictator standing there telling you that you went outside the line a little or the heart has to be to the left of the bear instead of the right. Since you are the one that is making the designs you can do combos or get really creative and enlarge or reduce the size of the images. Yeah, I intended on getting my dollar fifty out of this set.
There are some cool accessories with this; two hair bands, some metal barrette style clips, elastics and plastic combs. Of course this means that you have to break out the hot glue gun and attach all the shrunken items; don't waste your time trying to do this with regular all purpose glue because it will take forever to dry and when it does, it won’t stay stuck for very long. One thing that would have really ticked me off if I would have purchased this at full price is that you don't get any colored pencils or markers with this. Personally, I think you get the best results using markers but usually when you get kits they have colored pencils because they tend to make less of a mess.
After you've picked out the designs you want to work with, trace them out, color them, bake them, glue them to whatever hair accessory you want and allow it to set up you are finally ready to show them off. Needles to say, this isn't something that you are going to be able to do in fifteen minutes so make sure you have enough time set aside to get through all the steps. Most kids are way too impatient to go through all the sets necessary to complete these hair fashions so you may have to do things over the course of a couple of days. Annabelle is the exact opposite. I'm starting to see some true OCD traits in her; everything has to be even and symmetrical, colors have to match and please, don't ever suggest adding glitter to something without having everything covered in newspaper first. She insisted that once we started this little project that we finish it in one day. Three hours later we finally had a nice assortment of girlie hair things that she insisted I wear. Diva please … was all I could muster as I laughed at her and walked out of the room.
The price tag on this was $8.99 but it was marked down several times to the rock bottom price of $1.50, something that I just couldn't pass up. I guess that for little girls this is a nice activity set but if I would have paid full price for it and it didn’t have any preprinted images or colored pencils, I would have been a little ticked off. There are a few different girlie hair fashion sets from Shrinky Dink and Spin Master so if you check out this one and don’t like the designs in it, there are others to choose from. In a way I like the idea of making your own designs but part of me does feel a little ripped off. You can purchase additional blank sheets at most craft stores like Jo-Anne Fabrics and Michael's if you want to make more of these.
The Bottom Line
Try as I might, the Shrinky Dink oven just won't die so I am obligated to keep buying sets like this. After the initial batch of these, the little pink and purple wheels in Annabelle's head started spinning. She wanted to go to the store and get more blank sheets [she killed off the ones that I had on hand] so she could make matching hair fashion trinkets for her friends in her ballet class. This snowballed into her wanting to make personalized ones that she would sell at her little lemonade stand. If she keeps branching out and adding more stuff to that table, she's going to need a vending permit and having to start paying taxes.
As always, thanks for the visit…
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2007 Freak369
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Spin Master Shrinky Dinks Oven & Accessories
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1.50 - sale
Type of Toy: Arts and Crafts
Age Range of Child: Kids to Teens
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