Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Ikea Easel = Easy On the Pocketbook
Posted by Missy W. @ 2:09 PM
The thing that annoys me the most about Ikea is their website. I feel like they hide half the products and the other half are available to look at, but only a quarter of those are available to purchase online. Luckily, their totally rad Mala easel is amongst the glorified few available for online purchase.
The Mala easel is like a Kenmore appliance: it’s efficient, lacks most bells and whistle, and abslutely does its job. It has a chalkboard on one side and white board on the other, and it even folds flat when not in use. You can also buy the Mala paper roll separately that you can pull over the white board side for painting or drawing.
I like that the easel is plain wood, made from solid pine and spruce with a clear acrylic lacquer. I always feel embarrassed for utilitarian products like easels that are doused with decorations and massive swatches of primary colors. Are manufacturers honestly trying to blind us and our children? It’s also a good way to start (unpainted) since, of course, the thing will be covered in paint within the first day of setting it up. Ours looks like it was dropped into a hurricane of paint and markers, just like I like it. It looks used - as it should. It’s a kid’s toy after all.
I do think it’s a bit of a bummer that there is only a tray on the white board side of the easel, but for $20.00, I can see where they cut some corners. The kids know to come around to get something and hey! a lesson in sharing, right? Yeah, right. It’s really my only complaint. Oh, that and Sy’s school has the same one only it came without the dowel that holds the paper roll, which is a nuisance. The teacher is always trying to come up with ways to roll the paper around so it doesn’t come back and dip into the paint. Of course, all we need to do is go buy a dowel, but that always seems to be forgotten on a Saturday morning of errands.
Snapshot:
• Recommended for 3 and up, but we’ve enjoyed ours since Sy was 2.
• Compared to other easels out there, this thing is a steal at $19.99.
• This is Ikea. Check to make sure you got all the parts, like the all important dowel that catches the paper at the bottom.
• You can buy accessories like chalk, paper or white board pens at a great price. But of course, because they are Ikea, you can’t buy the chalk online. It must come in such a huge box that it’s completely cost-prohibitive to send?
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October 28, 2009 @ 01:01 PM
Mom of 5 said:
I recently purchased a new easel as my old one from 2002 finally bit the dust. I was disappointed to discover the white board no longer worked for my magnetic letters (the older model did). It was a very fun way to play ABC’s. Does anybody know what happened?