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.

Printies is another creative toy (yes, ANOTHER one) that promises not only the joy of creation, but a pretty cool payoff when you’re done. In a nutshell, kids can design their own stuffed animal using the Printies software (this is downloadable) and when their creation is done, they can print it on special fabric sheets that are designed for ink jet printers.

How cool! (I thought to myself) – I have two stuffed-animal loving children. They’ll LOVE this. I’ll be a hero! They’ll have tons of fun with their Printies creations!! What could possibly go wrong??

So, in my pre-Christmas induced state of euphoria, I picked up my $20 box of Printies at Target figuring my girls would share it, happily wrapped it, labeled it from “Santa” even though my 8-year-old no longer believes and waited excitedly for their reaction on Christmas morning. I even bought a box for my 7 & 9 year old nieces.

Well here’s the thing – I’m sure a few of the terms above tripped off some alarm bells in your head – I know they did in mine. “Download the software” for one and “print your creation on an inkjet printer” for another. I mean, even if by some small miracle everything worked like it should, I’d still need to supervise the entire operation since my children are using an old laptop that literally groans when you turn it on (thus forcing me to download the Printies application onto MY laptop).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I let my 8-year-old create the first animal after registering on the Printies Web site. I should actually be very happy I had no trouble registering, since my sister-in-law said her code didn’t work when she tried registering and at least one poor Twitterer had the same experience. Well, actually, the first time I entered the code it didn’t work, but my daughter was reading it to me and she’d confused “O” with “zero.” It was easy to do, so if your code’s not working then give that a shot.

Okay, so, out of the box…here are some positive things before I taint you all with my cynicism.

1) The toy is only borderline pseudo-creative. Children can get very creative with their designs, as long as they stick with the four pre-cut animal shapes that come with the toy. This was disappointing to my daughter who is old hat at designing her own stuffed animals (on paper) but she still had fun.

2) When it came time to print, it worked! It really worked! I didn’t even have to align anything on the printer – everything was centered properly and aside from a few smudges which I’m hoping doesn’t happen with the next animal, it looked pretty good (though not as good as the above picture would suggest).

3) My daughter loved finishing off the Printies animal and was very happy with it. Smiles are all that count with Christmas toys since they so often generate tears.

4) There’s absolutely no sewing at all, thus making instant gratification a big perk with this toy (although the way they got around this is questionable)..see “cons.”

Now the cons…

1) You do have to download software onto a computer. This is a very quick process, but it still must be done. So the toy requiries parental hands on assistance for most kids and it helps to be a bit computer savvy, which not all of us are.

2) The Printies design interface was very frustrating to my daughter (and to me, actually). It’s just not well-thought out and it didn’t always respond to a simple click. We trashed at least three designs before finally getting it right. Here’s a screen shot of the interface:

3) To finish off the animal after printing it and stuffing it (yes, the stuffing comes in the box), you have to attach it to little plastic feet. Hard plastic feet. Hard plastic is not very snuggly – sort of ruins the whole concept of a “plush” toy in my opinion. My daughter didn’t seem to mind though, but I thought it made the whole thing look kind of cheesy which it arguably is anyway. I know they did this to get away with saying “no sewing necessary at all!” but still, have they never heard of velcro??

4) When you’ve blown through all six Printies designs, you now have six new stuffed animals to deal with. My daughter hasn’t touched hers since she made it, although she is still quite overwhelmed with new toys from Christmas. She does seem delighted with it though, so I guess..that’s…all…that..matters…

My conclusion: For $20.00, it’s worth buying but the toy is not for everyone. If you are comfortable downloading software onto your computer, don’t mind helping your child through some moments of frustration due to the faulty design interface and are comfortable using an inkjet printer, then go for it! You also may want to plan out where the finished animals go. I personally have very little room for more tiny stuffed animals in my home, or in my psyche (as it turns out).

I found a cool box of Printies on Amazon for about $19.00..

I like that the Ocean Design Studio has templates with rounded heads so kids can make people if they want (not just animals) or just get more creative with their designs. I find built-in ears so confining, don’t you? This set also comes with 9 fabric sheets rather than the six mine came with for more Printies fun! (and more little animals around the house).

That toy is (are?) PixOs, which are basically tiny little plastic dots that kids can form into shapes by placing them beside each other in a sort of plastic grid thingy. They then spritz them with water and the dots stick together forming a plastic dot sculpture which is pretty sturdy. Here’s an example:

I generally run from toys like PixOs since they contain several very bright red flags as follows:

1) They’re expensive – even the smallest PixOs product is about $10.00 for what amounts to a hand full of plastic dots, a special PixOs “pen” and a plastic grid work surface that’s about 4×4 inches. So basically $10.00 buys about 20 minutes of “creativity” and then your child is done with the product until you scarf up another $10.00 for the refills.

2) They have lots of brightly colored plastic pieces – after years of buying toddler toys that fit this description (think “Little People”), I have a strong aversion to any toy that can’t easily be thrown in a bin and stored out of site. PixOs has the added fun of a zillion tiny little plastic beads which are now forever stuck in between my floor boards. I only hope they’re not toxic to pets. Here’s what the set I bought for my kids looks like (this was about $26.00 at Target):

See what I mean? So now we own two of those monstrosities. But I have some more reservations…

3) PixOs are a pseudo-creative toy. Yep, so many of these types of toys exist (think “shrinky dinks”) that I’ve been inspired to create a whole new category for them. What makes a toy pseudo creative? Well, we’re not talking real art supplies here – this isn’t clay or colored pencils and a sketchbook or paint and popsicle sticks. PixOs holds the sweet promise of creativity which almost always ends in tears, boredom or disappointment. First of all, unless your child is extremely creative – and you know who you are – you’re pretty much stuck with the templates that come with the thing. You can buy PixOs refill packs with additional templates and beads (and you’ll have to fairly quickly) or go to the PixOs site and print some more templates, but there’s not a whole lot there. I do like the fact that you can design your own template on the site and print it out – so PixOs gets some points for that.

4) They aren’t entirely age appropriate. PixOs is indicated for children aged 4+ but my 5.5 year old (who is VERY artistic and good with her hands) can only conceptually deal with 2D PixOs designs of her own creation – she hasn’t tried following a pattern yet. So we now have a pile of useless PixOs asymmetrical sculptures which can’t really be played with. I can’t imagine a 4-year-old having a successful playtime experience with these things that doesn’t involve a very patient parent working with them.

5) They are useless when you’re not actually creating anything. Okay, I suppose this is debatable. I can envision my children making PixOs animals and people and playing with them – but the beads do tend to fall apart with too much handling and there really isn’t a lot of “playability” with finished pixOs sculptures. So you’re stuck with completed masterpieces that you have to throw away after you’ve moved them around the house fifty-seven times and finally got fed up with keeping them (or maybe that’s just me).

My Conclusion: Get a small kit first before you go all out like I did and get the large set. I would, in fact, avoid buying the larger sets altogether and just stick with buying a starter set and refills if your child really loves these things. Remember – toys that can be stored in drawers and bins are a-okay!

Amazon has starter sets for about $15.00 each:

Pixos Starter Set