Product Review: Doodle Cake Crayons by @AlexToys

This week, my daughter and I had the opportunity of reviewing one of Alex Toys’ products. They sent us their Doodle Cake Crayons. As soon as I opened the box, I said to myself: “Someone’s going to have fun here”!

I always feel excited when I open anything that comes through regular mail. It’s magical! I love to rip the tape off and slowly open each flap. Makes me feel loved! What can I say? It does. As I opened the box, I called on my daughter. She seemed a little upset! I guess it was because I opened the box without her, but as soon as she saw what was inside, her complexion changed to that of a very happy child. I had opened a box filled with happiness! Very cool indeed!

Inside the box, we found: crumbled wax in several colors, a plastic mold, plastic spoon, doily and, the most important thing of all – the instructions. Even though I wanted to start playing with it right away, I reached for the instructions first. Not my daughter, she grabbed the rest of the things. She wanted to start doing whatever it was that this toy was about. With the Doodle Cake Crayons we were going to make our own coloring crayons… in the shape of muffins!

Allow me to be more specific on how we played with the Doodle Cake Crayons. First, we could use every color included in the box. We could layer them, mix them… go crazy! This was my daughter’s favorite part. I invited my 2.5 year old son, but he kept on playing with his cars and airplanes. Apparently the box nailed it right with their 6+ notification. My daughter was perfect for the job!

Step 1: Open the wax bags.

As if we needed this instruction. Done!

Step2a: Fill each hole on the mold with colored wax.

The excitement was really building up by now.

Step2b: Mix or layer the colors.

Let’s just say that the spoon can be converted into a blender. At least on our hands.

Step3: With the help of an adult, pre-heat the oven to 325*F (163*C). Bake for 8 minutes.

We had a problem here! “With the help of an adult”? Well, Master Yaddle (my wife) wasn’t at home, so I saw no other way than to pretend I was the adult for a few minutes. (I was as excited as a kid with this project!)

Step4: When the wax starts bubbling, turn off the oven.

I don’t know if I was expecting to se bubbles worthy of Hermione Granger‘s mixing cauldron, but I never saw these. So I left the wax in the oven for about 40 minutes; 32 minutes more than what the instructions read. When those 40 minutes went by, I said to my daughter: “I can’t wait any longer! I’m taking it out now!”. She replied by saying: “I was going to tell you just that!”. The tone of her voice leads one to believe that she is more of an adult than her father. Her answers always impress me!

Step5: When the crayons cool off, pop them out of the mold.

After watching them tirelessly for a few minutes, the crayons were cool enough and we scooped them out. We played with them for a while pretending they were real muffins. Then she remembered and said: “Daddy, can we paint using these?” “But wouldn’t that ruin the muffins?”, I replied. After a few awkward looks from my little Princess, I got a sheet of paper and YES!, they can be used for painting!

After using them for a bit, I noticed it was rather hard to paint with our new muffins. Even though I pressed them against the sheet of paper the multi-colored paint would not apply on as easily as a regular crayons do. It was rather difficult to grab the muffin and paint at the same time. And no matter how hard we pressed them, the colors came out “washed”. Not intense like any other crayon. So we went back and pretended we were having a picnic.

To my surprise, my daughter did not care at all. When I asked her, she had not noticed they were hard to paint with. (I guess I had put on my adult clothes again.) My kid would not have seen this “flaw” if the boring adult would have kept his mouth shut. Lesson learned. I guess because I was supposed to write a review afterwards, I looked upon it with critical eyes. Good thing I had my Princess as back-up!

Recap:

The process of prepping the wax, mixing, cooking and waiting was an amazing time spent with my daughter. We had lots of fun imagining how the crayons would turn out. Choosing the colors we were going to use and making a mess in the kitchen without caring was great fun! Getting our muffins out of the oven, waiting for them to cool and popping them out of the mold was time well-spent with my kid. I loved every minute, and so did she. For this, I recommend this product! I look forward to creating even more Doodle Cake Crayons with my Princess. I know she’s going to want to share this experience with her friends, so next time I’ll probably be making a big production number on this new and very cool “toy”! Just keep in mind that coloring with the muffins can be somewhat tricky.

Have you had the opportunity to play with this? Have you done so with a similar toy? Share your experiences with us down on the comments section!

Disclosure: We where given a free box of Alex Toys’ Doodle Cake Crayons to review and write this article. Even though our new toy was given to us for free, we feel this has not influenced our opinion in any way.

www.AlexToys.com
Twitter: @AlexToys
Facebook: facebook.com/ALEXToys