I posted my first review of Printies the week after Christmas, so I  won’t bore you with a list of my reservations (again). There were also some things I liked about the product such as the fact that my printer handled the fabric sheets without a problem and the Printies were centered without me having to align everything.

Since the week after Christmas involved a cornucopia of new toys,  I didn’t really have the time to fully evaluate the product. I also didn’t give it the 5-year-old test (my 8-year-old made just one stuffed animal). I was, frankly, afraid to get into it with Emily (the 5-year-old) since she tends to become very frustrated if she’s thwarted by things like software or poorly made toys.

But yesterday, after Emily begged me for the 5th time to make her own stuffed animal, I broke out the Printies once again and decided to make good on my promise to help her make one. It was around 10:00 a.m. when I began the process. TWO HOURS LATER, we had two more Printies of questionable quality. I’ve taken a picture because words can’t really capture this:

The animal on the left is supposed to be a cat, by the way. That’s the one Emily did with a lot of help from me and older sister Ana, who is 8 and can (thankfully) read on screen instructions. I can’t emphasize this enough…THE FIVE YEAR OLD HAD A LOT OF HELP.

Ana made the one on the right and thought it would be fun if she added her face to her creation. It turned out to be very frustrating for both of us, since I had to find a picture, resize it properly, and upload it to Printies before she could play with it. The Printies interface which, per my previous post, is horrible, uses the same command for stretching and rotating an image. Let me make a polite suggestion to the folks at Printies – for the next iteration of this thing – MAKE IT TWO DIFFERENT COMMANDS. It’s very frustrating for an 8-year-old when she keeps rotating her own face and all she wants to do is stretch it, or vice versa.

So, both these things printed fine, albeit a little faded but we’ll blame this on my printer settings rather than Printies. Then it came time to finish them off. Emily had fun stuffing hers for about 10 minutes then got tired of it and so I finished it for her. No matter how much I stuffed, the neck part of the dog still buckled inward as you can see in the photo. This would be no big deal to most reasonable people, but Emily is 5 so is completely unreasonable.

Then there’s the little matter of attaching the feet. Emily joyfully chose her doll’s feet and I secured the feet to the doll and placed it on a table where it promptly fell over. I then spent 10-15 minutes trying to secure the feet to the doll in such a way that it wouldn’t fall over (again, trying to comply with Emily’s completely unreasonable request). I ended up putting more stuffing in it and finally succeeding. Emily then joyfully placed the stickers on the shoes and we were done. Please reread the above paragraph and replace “Emily” with “Ana” and you will have a good idea of how I spent my Sunday morning.

I want to mention that it’s very hard to be truly creative with the toy, particularly for younger kids. The reason Emily’s doll looks so good is she pretty much stuck with the templates that came with the software, rather than “drawing” or “painting” using the freehand drawing tools. When she tried to draw in the Printies software, she scribbled all over the design and practically turned purple with frustration. At one point I thought the top of her head was going to shoot off. Thank GOD for the “undo” button – one of the few usable tools in the software (don’t get me started on how I accidentally undid half of Ana’s work).

One other thing – apparently Printies are like Gremlins in that you can’t get them wet. If you look closely at the cat/dog, above, you’ll see a smudge on its left side above the paw which I’m assuming happened because it got some water on it. Stuffed animal colors shouldn’t run. It’s just sad and wrong. I’m revising my originally tentative suggestion to purchase a $20 set and try it out.

I personally wouldn’t recommend the product, but I’m not YOUR mother so do what you want. I know this got some sort of best toy award and I can only speak for my experience. There aren’t enough Sunday mornings in my life to waste them on poorly designed pseudo-creative toys.

| Category Ends in Tears, Pseudo-Creative Toys