Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Scra-ffiti Scratch Art

Alex is a trusted brand in our house. We have purchased many Alex products in the past and always found they had quality at a good price point. We own another Scratch Art book that we purchased at a museum gift store. It is quite similar to this, except this features The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Easy enough for the littles ones or the older child can get more creative with their drawings. I am adding a picture below to show you a 4 year olds creation. If you carefully cut the plastic holder where the wooden pencil comes, you can store it again in the same place. This way, it doesn't get lost and makes for easy traveling! UPDATE: We have been using this for a week now. I have changed my initial thought a bit. What a mess this has made. It isn't just a wipe and clean! This actually is stuck to the table! The flecks that have been scraped off are not only stuck to the table, but have managed to get under the glass table top. I can't imagine using this in the car. UPDATE: It has been several months since we began using the TMNT scratch book. We opted to use it outside after our first experience. To this day, I still have tiny flecks that have managed their way under the glass tabletop and can't get them out.

Fun but messy! I let my kiddo do a handful of pages and told him he needed to do the rest outside if he wanted to keep it. Would not recommend, over the top not worth the clean up hassle.

This is a fun activity for kids to do.

This is a mess. The stick to color with is a wooden kabob stick with a pointed end. So, you will want to keep an eye on even older kids so they don't go missing an eyeball from the stick. You scratch off the black areas to uncover colors underneath. You color with the stick, like you would a crayon and the black comes off to reveal color. The outlines of the turtles is white, but when you color, even the white comes off so you're just left with ugly blobs of terrible colors. The colors look awful. Very drab and light. Mostly everything is a light army green and brown. You end up with nothing like you'd expect. It's terrible. Then, you have the mess of the black stuff coming off. After coloring for a few minutes the child came to me and said he needed his hands washed and held out his palms to show me. It looked EXACTLY like he was playing in cigarette ashes. It was nasty and I asked him what he did. There's no ashtrays in the house because no one smokes inside, so this had me baffled and I looked around in confusion. Then he tells me it was from the coloring book and showed me by putting his hand on it again. Disgusting. Washed his hands and he was done with the book. He had no interest anymore because of the awful coloring experience of the terrible colors and the white outlines of everything just disappearing. I would not recommend these at all and I think the kabob stick is a terrible idea for kids to begin with.

My son loves to do these scratch art pictures. He loves this set, especially since it features the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The book includes a stylus. I like that the stylus can be stored on the front of the book. The stylus is a little sharp on the end but it is fine for a child that knows not to run with it. The suggested age of 5 years and older is on target. The book includes a good variety of TMNT scenes and characters. In the back, the plain black page is a set of scratch-able stickers.Just be aware that this can be messy. I have found it is a good project for doing outside. When he does play with it indoors, I like to put a cookie sheet under the book and an old towel under the cookie sheet. It makes clean up so much easier and quicker. This isn't something you want to let you child do before going somewhere since their hands can get pretty dirty not to mention, kids are bad about wiping their hands on their clothes. I have had no issues with it washing out of clothing. It does keep him occupied for awhile.If your child loves these and is a Turtle's fan fan, this should be a big hit.

I remember this toy as a kid, but without the stencil already done for you. It also had more of an oil or waxy base to it. I got this for a "Turtle" fan who just turned five. His seven year old brother got bored, which was good because there was only one and it wasn't his gift anyway. The kids didn't see the point of messing up the pictures of the turtles. There are several pictures, but our copy did not have the stickers. There are two pages for freestyle, but the kids were more interested in the turtle pictures, as is.The cost is around $10 bucks on Amazon, which is pretty good for what you get (my two testers just weren't interested, plus they feed off each other). I kind of glad the stickers weren't in there because, honestly, that's one less thing for me to scrape off the wall.

My daughter loves scratch art. I hate the black stuff that gets on everything when she does it. So mom's hint? Put tons of newspaper wherever your kid is going to be doing this. When you look at it and think you've put down enough? Put more. And still expect to clean up later.From the kid's point of view, she loved this. She loves TMNT (especially Mikey) and got such a kick out of this. The colors were really vibrant and I have to admit, I really liked the look of what she did. (Hated, hated, hated the clean up!)This is good on a rainy day or an extremely hot day when you need to keep the kids occupied for a bit. Just keep in mind, they'll do it once and done. This isn't something they'll come back to.So, good short term fun and a lot of clean up.

This is a fun, easy activity that kids will enjoy. My 6 year old likes it but as others mention, don't let toddlers get hold of the sharp writing stick. For what you get, the price ($9.50) isn't too bad although I wish they'd knock a couple dollars off. These are the sort of things that I like to keep on hand for a rainy-day activity BUT you can't do that with this product because it's so ridiculously messy. I tried laying a towel down and having my kid use it on top of the towel but scrapings still ended up on the floor and on my child. So after that experience I'm saying outdoor use only (on the picnic table) for this product. Therefore, I don't think it's very practical and can't recommend it.