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I love the yellow pots, with their coloured lids. I love the way it squishes, and squeezes. I love the softness of it, and the malleability of it. I even love the slightly odd smell of it.
But most of all, I love the colours. I love the brightness, the clarity, the range.
Which is why I am a PlayDoh fascist.
Because, let's face it, your average 3-year (or indeed 19-month) old child just doesn't get it. Give them some PlayDoh and what do they do? They squish it. They mush it. They roll it around and have fun with it (damn them) and you end up with a pile of sludge-coloured goo.
And I hate sludge-coloured goo almost as much as I love PlayDoh.
Which is why, I am afraid, I am unconvinced by the PlayDoh Fun Factory they so kindly sent me a while back.Let's get one thing straight of course. The girls loved it, especially L. (S and A weren't so keen, but then they haven't yet quite worked out that PlayDoh isn't for eating, and so tended to get cross when I took the PlayDoh off them to put in the factory.) It's basically a big PlayDoh press with a dial on the front with lots of different shaped holes in it, so that you can make lots of differently shaped tubes of PlayDoh.
Like this:
It comes with a red tub and a blue tub of PlayDoh, which tuck neatly away inside it along with a spatula for scraping and cutting and poking in your sister's eye (which may not be exactly what they designed it for).
The problem? It's got lots of little nooks and crannies, where the spatula can't reach, and so however hard you (for which read "I" try) bits of blue stick and then bits of red, and then all the rest of the colours you've found in the back of the cupboard and want to play with too because it's so much fun and before you know it you're back at the sludge-coloured goo stage...
So, anyway, the verdict on the PlayDoh Fun Factory? Great for kids. Rubbish for fascists.
But mmmm... that smell. I love it. I take the view that you just have to go with the flow regarding the lovely colours getting mushed up to brown, and then treat yourself to some nice new stuff, sit down with a cup of tea, and crack open a fresh tub...
ReplyDeleteI always made my own play doh - that way I could just throw it away as soon as it got mixed up without guilt. The barber shop hair I used to be pushing at the holes with a cocktail stick trying to sort out the mess!! PS don't think I am trying to be a cool mum because I 'made' it...it was down to selfish tightness and the fact that getting daughter to mix up the ingredients took up another 30 mins of playtime that I would otherwise have resorted to cbeebies to fill!
ReplyDeleteYes homemade is the way to go! I remember having one of these Playdoh factory things - fun to play with but yes it did result in a multicoloured goo !
ReplyDeleteYou'd get on well with my husband - he's a similar playdoh fascist. It all has to go back in the correct pots with the right lids, never mixed colourwise. I haven't got the heart to tell him that's it's currently all mixed up, wrong pots and whisper it....lids off. It's because we were in such a rush to put it away last time!
ReplyDeleteWith you on liking the smell. My favourite attachment is the one with all the tiny holes so it comes out like little worms.
Fiona - if I'm sitting down to a cup of tea, it's a fresh tup of biscuits (preferably the M&S mini sort) that I want to be cracking open.... but I take your point!
ReplyDeleteQueenie and Kelloggsville - metaphorical (and real) hats off to you both. I feel that as a SAHM I really ought to be making my own, but, but but.... As it is, it's possibly the stinginess that makes me such a fascist: if it stays nice I don't have to buy any new stuff...(but including the making of it as part of playtime is a genius idea.... off to google playdoh recipes...)
Deer Baby - lids off??!?!!??!?!?!?!?! That is *almost* a divorceable offence... (but don't worry, I won't tell him if you don't!). And with you too on the wormy attachment. I've got some great wormy pictures of it I was going to include in the post, but I couldn't quite fit them into the flow of the words...