Product: On-the-Go Colorblast! Activity Book
Company: Melissa and Doug
Website: www.melissaanddoug.com
Recommended Age Range: 2 to 7 years
Price Range: $3 to $5
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Comments: I remember doing similar “invisible ink” books when I was young and loving them, but come-on, $5 on a book that’s going to be trash when your child is through? I wasn’t wasting my money on that. We really like the Water Wow and reusable sticker books by Melissa and Doug, which theoretically, if you took care of them, would last forever. However, my kids are not the best at taking care of things and I’m not the best at enforcing such behavior.

Three months ago, my 4 kids and I decided to road trip with my husband to a conference for his work. I started packing our entertainment travel bag for the 6 hour car ride and week long trip and realized that a lot of my fallbacks needed to be replaced. Our reusable stickers were a giant mess and had greatly lost their ability to stick. One of my lovely children had scratched the disappearing white layer off of a bunch of pages of our Water Wow books. I knew that to ensure a successful vacation, I was going to have to make a small investment to stock up our “fun” bag.

Just to try something new, which is super effective at gaining my children’s enthusiasm, I decided to give these Colorblast books a shot. I bought one for each of my 3 older children (2, 4, and 7 years). The very first night, when my kids were starting to bounce off the walls of the hotel room, I brought out these books. I could not believe the silence that followed. Each child diligently colored 2 pages of their books for about 20 minutes before bedtime. They would have colored more, but I cut them off at 2 pages to make sure they didn’t run out of fun.

When the books continued to distract them the following nights and during dinner at a restaurant, I was completely sold. I didn’t know why I was so worried about my kids racing through them. They really do last a LONG time. My oldest colored in his much of the drive home and didn’t complete the book.

I was so sure I wanted to add them to my list of recommended travel toys. However, after we got home, my son showed me that his marker was all but dried out even though he still had 5 pages to color. I decided to send an email to Melissa & Doug’s customer service just to see what would happen.

After 1 business day, I received an incredibly kind, thoughtful email from their customer service. In addition to being apologetic, they offered the following advice:

“The issue that you are describing is common when the marker has dried out.  A little “refresh” usually does the trick.  Please submerge the tip of the marker in rubbing alcohol for 5 minutes, re-cap the marker and allow it to sit for at least 15 minutes, be advised that this may seem like a lifetime to a little one. Hopefully this works. If you are still having trouble please give us a call at 1-800-284-3948 during our business hours.”

Pleased with their response, I decided to try their “trick”. (I realized later this trick is actually printed on the back of the book.) However, I didn’t have rubbing alcohol and was in a hurry, so I tried nail polish remover. Also, being the mom of 4 and a scatterbrain, after submerging our marker, I proceeded to forget about it for the next 3 hours. When I finally took it out, it didn’t work at all. I thought about calling and saying that their trick didn’t work, but ultimately, I just forgot about it.

Fast forward nearly 3 months later, I’m cleaning out our house and stumble across the Colorblast book and useless marker. Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I decided to give them a call and see what happened. I told the lady on the phone the complete truth. That I purchased the book a LONG time ago and completely screwed up the advice given. Other than the code on the back of the book which told her which book I had, she didn’t ask for any more verification that I’d even purchased the book. She said she would send me a replacement marker. 7 days later, I received an envelope with FOUR replacement markers in it.

I honestly can’t believe how great their customer service is. Maybe I’ve just spent too much time on the phone with our internet company, but I just don’t expect customer service people to be that friendly or helpful. The people I spoke with via email and phone at Melissa & Doug were both friendly and helpful to an astonishing degree. I will definitely be buying more of their products in the future.

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Comments: First, there is a tiny deck of 20 cards that are part of the game and keeping track of those can be challenging with a toddler who likes to throw them all over the place. However, since you only need to keep track of up to 2 cards during game play, if the child you are trying to entertain is 3 or older, you can pretty much play this game anywhere. The box lists an age range of 6+, but my 4 year old LOVES to play like this: He holds a card. I ask him questions. I tell him who he picked. Obviously, there is no real winner or loser, but somehow he thinks this is awesome and will happily do this for 30 minutes or more. I think it’s great, because he’s actually gotten new vocabulary from this game like “facial hair” and “earrings”. He also has to work on his observation skills when I think of new questions to ask him like, “Can you see your person’s teeth?” or “Is your person looking straight ahead (or to the side)?” Now that he’s learning his letters and sounds, I can ask him questions like, “Does your person’s name start with a J (or juh)?” Unfortunately, while I think he conceptually understands how to play the real way, he’s not quite up to a full 2-way game at this point. He’ll ask a question, put down a couple of people, and then get distracted. Also, I was a little disappointed that the face cards slide down instead of there being hinged pieces to close like in the original version of Guess Who. I thought my toddler would enjoy the original hinged style, but I do think that this travel version was pretty well thought out.

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Comments: I love the flexibility of little lap-size magnetic dry-erase boards. I let my kids use the markers occasionally, but due to odor and the risk of stains, I mostly give them whiteboard crayons. They aren’t quite as easy to wipe off, but make much less of a mess and don’t smell at all. Also, because the board is magnetic, it can be combined with homemade magnets or store bought magnets such as the animal set by Melissa & Doug (or really any random assortment of magnets). If I’m low on space in my travel pack, I only take a folder with blank paper or a small notebook and a pack of regular crayons, but if I’m able to bring a big tote bag, I like this little white board and the whiteboard crayons for their novelty and flexibility. Also, this dry-erase setup works better in the car or on an airplane than regular crayons and paper, though maybe not as well as a magna doodle, since the child will likely need help erasing.

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Comments: I pretty much always have a deck of playing cards with me, even if it’s just me and my husband that need to wait somewhere (like an airport during our pre-kids life or at one of my prenatal appointments). If the wait is going to be long, I’m not one to waste time, and I love playing cards. The great thing about a deck of cards is that no matter how small a bag I bring, they always fit. It’s also important to me that my kids learn to love playing cards too. I’ve always been fairly good at math and I think the fact that I was playing gin rummy and cribbage with my grandparents from a young age didn’t hurt. At this point my toddler mainly likes to pass them out and make a big mess, but since my son turned 3, he has been fairly good at basic games like Slapjack and War. Even at 4, he still has trouble holding the cards, but he likes playing games like Go Fish and Old Maid. Cards are obviously not the best way to kill time when you’re in a moving vehicle, and they can be messy depending on the age of the child (which is why my toddler has her own deck), but if you’re going to be away from home for a while (in a hotel, waiting through a sibling’s class, visiting relatives, etc.) their fun to size ratio is hard to beat.

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Comments: We have an older version of travel Connect Four than the one presently being sold, but I imagine the current version is still a pretty good bet. The game is meant to be played by kids 6 and up, but my kids are only 2 and 4 and they have a lot of fun with this game. The two year old mostly just likes practicing her fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination by putting all the little tokens in the playing board. My four year old only knows how to win by making a vertical 4-in-a-row at the moment, so we frequently have to have mini talks about how to be a “good sport” even when someone blocks your move and say “good game” even when you lose. He’s getting better, but mostly he likes to play his sister, because she doesn’t know how to block his one and only strategy. The one negative about this game is that it can’t be played anywhere, because the tiny little tokens are easily dropped. However, if your kid has a surface to play on and they are going to have a warning when they need to clean up, it works out well. We mostly use it when we take the kids to gymnastics, since they are in different classes and each one has to wait an hour while the other one is in their class. Also, note that this game would not be great for babies and toddlers who still put things in their mouth, as the little tokens are definitely a choking hazard. However, if they’re beyond that stage, the size makes them extra appealing to hold.

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Comments: We got one of these magnetic books from a used book store and it was missing half the magnets, but my son still really loved playing with it for several days. Not only does it make a good, quiet distraction while away from home, but since the pieces are magnetic, they’re harder to lose, so this can be used in the car or other places where you don’t necessarily have a table or surface to play on. I haven’t tried it yet, but since we’ve also made our own travel magnet boards using pictures of family members and other characters our kids like, we could probably use those magnets in these books to make them extra fun.

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Comments: We use homemade play dough at home so that we can have as large a quantity as desired, but we always take a few small size Play-Dohs with us in our travel kit. (I can’t stand how hard the tiny Play-Doh containers are to open, so I’ve recently started putting a few different colors inside one small ziploc bag. At this point I could probably use the homemade variety, but I think it’s nice to use the vibrant Play-Doh colors as a special travel treat.) The toddler likes playing with it mostly by breaking off small pieces and trying to pawn them off to anyone within ear shot. The preschooler likes telling the adults in the group what we should make him (“whale”, “T-rex”, etc.). It’s made me realize that some people (like my brother) are far more talented at play dough sculptures than others (for example, me). The best part about play dough is that you don’t really need to have a surface to have fun with it, so it’s good in the car or even on a crowded train. If you’re at a restaurant and can stab it with straws, even better.

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Comments: I was a little disappointed with the quality of picture made by this Fisher Price travel magna doodle and by how poorly it seems to erase, but it has lasted a long time and my 1 and 4 year old don’t seem to care in the slightest about the quality of picture. (Mostly they just want to color in the entire space at this point anyway.) We only have one and they’ve fought over it so often that I’ve seriously considered buying another one. I haven’t, because making them share seems to increase its appeal. At one point, we had a generic brand one too, but at some point a couple months after purchasing it, the magnetic tip fell out of the pen, never to be seen again. After a couple years, we haven’t had that problem with this one. It’s great for car/plane/train travel. I imagine when they’re older, it will also be fun for two-person games like tic-tac-toe or the “dot” game.

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Comments: Both my 18 month old and my nearly 4 year old LOVE lift-the-flap books. We have three different versions of the ones by Fisher Price Little People, but there are tons to choose from. The Little People ones are great because they have enough flaps to keep toddlers and preschoolers entertained for quite awhile. To be honest, these books kind of drive me crazy at this point. I used to read these books all the time to them, and they do reinforce a lot of useful concepts, like colors, shapes, opposites, feelings, etc., but I’ve read them so many times that now I tell them they have to do them on their own now and bring me a real book to read to them. Don’t get me wrong. My lack of enthusiasm hasn’t really dampened their love of these books at all.

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Comments: My mom found these at Target and I think they’re awesome. You fill the paint brush with water (which, FYI, is really easy to do at a restaurant with a glass of water and a straw), you paint on them and all the colors show up, they dry off a few minutes later, turn white, and are ready to use again. We own 3 different ones (each with 4 pages to “paint”) and I always take them to restaurants with us. They do tend to warp with time, and the white has scratched off in some of the scenes, but we’ve been using them for about 6 months now and honestly the kids don’t like them any less than the day my mom gave them to us. They’re good for at least 10 minutes, which in a restaurant is usually just long enough. There are also several different versions to choose from (animals, vehicles, fairy tales, letters, and numbers).

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