Disney Princess Tiana and Rapunzel Paint Your Own Statue

My wife purchased two different sets (a Rapunzel/Tiana Set and a Tinkerbell/Silvermist Set) for my two daughters (ages 3 and 6) and their friends for a birthday sleepover art project. Overall, the girls had fun painting them, but from a parent's perspective, they could be much better.The statues look nice and the paint went on pretty well, but the end result can be pretty messy. The girls had fun doing the painting, but I don't see them as a long term keepsake.The primary frustration is that all of these sets are mass produced, as expected, and there is little thought put into the paint colors that are needed to match each character. All of the sets come with the same set of 6 paint colors (red, yellow, blue, green, white & black) in a small strip of tiny canisters that are all attached together. They also come with instructions how how to mix these standard colors to get colors that are needed for the included characters. The problem is that the complex instructions can require 3 or more colors in varying amounts. For example, to get the Purple color you needed for Rapunzel's dress, you had to mix all the red paint, all the blue paint, and one third of another color. This is pretty complex for a kid to do perfectly (even with adult help). Maybe you get the right color, but once you make the purple, you no have no red or blue paint left to use on any other parts of the statue. And if a kid doesn't mix it perfectly, now all you have is a mess with no extra. In addition, Tiana's dress was so large, that there wasn't enough green paint to cover it, so we had to use the green from one of the other sets. If we didn't have another set, we'd be out of luck. Getting skin tones for the Princesses and the Fairies was even more complicated to mix.Long story short, if you're just looking for something for your kids to do and don't really care about making the statues look like the cartoons, this is probably fine. If your child is a perfectionist and wants to make the faces and colors match their favorite characters, you could be in for some trouble. In my opinion, it would have been nice if the manufacturer customized the paint colors for the characters in the box. I'm sure they did it this way to save money, but what you end up with is a mediocre throw-away product.

nice way to spend time

my granddaughter loves the princesses and has them proudly sitting on her shelf. tangled is her favorite one. she loves to watch the movies.

Both of my kids received a set of these to paint over the holidays. My son has not even looked at his (Mater and Lightning), but that's understandable given that he's four. My daughter, 7, was interested. My biggest beef with the toy is the brush. You are encouraged to mix the paints to get the tones for their respective dresses, as they give you formulas to do so. We improvised and mixed in the plastic tray in which the figurines came. We used the brush to mix, which proved to be cheap and fell apart quickly. The bristles splayed so that she could not be precise with what she was painting. The result, frankly, was sloppy, cheap looking statues that we will have until she agrees to give them away. Sweet. They are designed to be decorative, so there is virtually no play value beyond the fifteen minutes they take to paint. Subtract the ten minutes of setup/cleanup...there you go.

Enjoyed them very much I did use my own paint brushes but I loved the way they turned out

This toy was great fun for my daughter she loves the Disney Princesses and couldn't have been happier with this toy.