Gearhead Mom

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

What We Really Need in the World? More Spotz. Notz.

Posted by Gwen R. @ 9:26 AM

Ed. Note: Here’s part three of my sister’s four part review series. Thanks, sis!

My daughter and I have very different opinions of the Zizzle Spotz Creator.  She thinks it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and has spent hours and hours playing with it.  I think it is a relentless conspiracy plot to bankrupt well-meaning parents and to fill the world with lots of little plastic pieces.  We’ve agreed to disagree.

That T loves the product is, of course, a good thing as self-directed craft-play is always welcome.  On the surface, the Spotz Creator seems promising.  The central ‘Creator’ console is made of strong extruded plastic in bright kid-centric colors and has smooth edges.  The gears are big, the punch simple and the concept clear:  put the parts into the obvious places, punch down, get Spotz (a little plastic ring with paper inside).  You color/draw on the paper (it comes with translucent paper with little printed pictures to color and with blank sheets in case you want to design your own), cut it out square, put it in the top punch machine, line up the little plastic rings with the little plastic covers, push down, and PRESTO, you have a Spotz of your own making.

From the outside, it seems to encourage creativity.  Though my child never chose to self-create, far preferring their generic little drawings for I don’t know why, she did enjoy coloring them and Loved putting them in the maker.  I told myself it was good for hand/eye coordination to shove little pieces of paper into the paper slot.

The other good thing about the Spots creator is that it appeals to a broad range of ages.  I watched one evening while my 6-year old and a 10-year old family friend played together with it for literally hours, making things, creating games around the little plastic picture disks.  All good.

The first catch comes, however, in the insatiable thirst for refills.  A basic Spotz Creator kit comes with enough material to make thirty Spotz.  For a toy that costs around $25.00, that seemed like a reasonably good deal.  But turns out a 6-year old can make 30 Spotz in around two hours.  With a collaborator of any kind, 30 can take less than an hour. With refill packs costing anywhere from $5.00-$12.00 for just twenty more, to keep a kid in Spotz would cost a fortune.  (I had the good fortune to pick up a few refills at a sale, but even then I’d bet I spent at least $25.00 for 60 more of the buggers.)

And this is not to even mention the next pressing problem – what in the world do you do with all these little illustration-filled, plastic disks?  We have them everywhere. Yes, there were a few lucky family members ‘gifted’ them on various occasions, a few are attached to her suitcase (I anticipate a lost bag one day soon when they get caught in the conveyor belt) and some went home in collaborator’s pockets, but the Vast majority ended up drifting around T’s room.  Added bonus, if you step on them, they crack and pop open meaning you then have all three parts (broken top cover, cracked bottom disk, and little paper with drawing) on the floor.  I’ve swept up more than a few discarded parts. 

Which leads me to my biggest beef – without the refills, without the very specific 1-inch plastic rings, the machine is worthless.  You could conceivably duplicate the paper if you happened to have heavy weight translucent parchment kicking around the house (be careful, though, I spent a long time with tweezers pulling out some unsanctioned experimental paper…very bad).  But unless you happen to have your own home plastic extruder and custom mold maker at home (now There’s a product I’d be curious about), your Spotz creator is done when your patience with (or budget for) refills runs out and you’re left with a worthless plastic thing that does absolutely nothing.  Overall, I’d say this is a product that is Great to play with – at someone else’s house.

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