Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints – Review
May 26, 2008 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Arts and Crafts
Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints sets are a great idea. What child doesn’t love fingerpainting and what parent doesn’t detest the mess of fingerpainting? Enter Crayola’s mess-free solution! The problem is, the Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints product doesn’t work as well as kids and parents might like it to.
The Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints sets come with special paper and 6 “colorless” fingerpaints, which actually look like white globs of wax when they’re in the container. Kids dip their fingers into the white globs then rub their fingers on the special paper just as they would with normal fingerpaints. However, the Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints don’t provide the instant gratification that children get from traditional fingerpaints. Instead, children have to wait for more than a few seconds for the colorless globs that they rub on the special paper to turn into a color. Children without much patience (which probably accounts for 90% of children) have a hard time waiting for the colors to appear on the special paper. They keep piling on more and more of the white globs of colorless paint trying to make something appear. In short, they lose interest in this product very quickly.
I should also mention that my triplets will be 4 in July, so my review is based on a 4-year old’s reaction to the Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints. It’s quite possible that older children have more patience and will sit quietly and wait for the colors to appear on the special paper without getting frustrated (but I doubt it). The problem with that theory is that older children know how to use a paint brush and would probably lose interest with Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints very quickly, too.
One final complaint about Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints – the price. Each set costs $9.99. There is very little colorless paint provided given that steep price!
Have you tried Crayola Color Wonder No Mess Fingerpaints? What did you and you children think of them?
I haven’t ever actually tried the fingerpaints, but I have tried to Crayola Color Wonder Markers- I have not liked them at all! They sounded like such a great idea but I didn’t want to buy them because they were so expensive. My mom, though, bought them for my daughter (you gotta love grandparents) and I was so excited to try them. My daughter started coloring in her special Nemo coloring book- but it would only color on specific parts of the paper- she couldn’t just color wherever she wanted and have color show up. Then, when color did show up, it only showed in streaks, not a nice solid color. (I thought that it was just how my daughter colored, but no, when I did it I got the same result.) I hope that Crayola can fix this- it really would be nice to not have such a big mess all of the time!
I agree. It took awhile for my kids to understand that color doesn’t show up everywhere. They still get frustrated about that!