Customer Reviews

Alex My Art Spinner

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Santa gave this to my almost-four year old daughter last Christmas and it rapidly became the hit of the season. When I was her age I had a similar art spinner, though mine was a third-generation hand-me-down that never worked exactly right. Even so, it was one of my favorites too. :-)

Out of the box you get the spinner itself, five bottles of paint, two small bottles of glitter, a bunch of cards (both small and large), a plastic "splash ring" (more on that later), and the requisite instruction guide. Installation is very simple; remove one screw to access the battery compartment, insert one "C" cell, close it up, insert a card, set the splash ring in place, turn it on and get to painting. The card is held in place by the four corners, each slipping into a little nub on the green spinning platform. There are eight such nubs on the platform, four to accommodate each card size.

The main unit is about the size of a notebook and is somewhat cheap feeling, but has withstood a month of fairly regular use with no complaints. the base structure of the unit is purple with the accents (wheel, motor cover, power switch) in lime green. A beefy built-in handle allows the unit to be carried by the child. The power switch is located in the opening between the handle and base which means accidental power-ons will be pretty much nonexistent. The green spinning platform is held in place by a single center pin via friction and it works well. Given sufficient and appropriate pressure you can remove the platform without damage which makes cleanup easy.

The main unit has five built-in receptacles to hold paint and glitter. Here's my first complaint; there are five bottles of paint provided, but only three receptacles for them. Why? I can sort of understand if there were four receptacles; the child would naturally be using one bottle and would simply swap one bottle as needed. But three? I see no logic there, only laziness. They did manage to get the number of receptacles for the glitter correct, however.

Another minor complaint: Alex Toys clearly expects this to be a portable toy, given the fact that there is a built-in carrying handle. However, the receptacles for the paint and glitter don't hold the bottles tight enough to actually be portable. They fall right out as soon as the toy is lifted. What's the deal here, Alex Toys? (TIP: I was able to overcome this by putting little Velcro dots at the bottom of each receptacle, with the mating Velcro dot at the bottom of each bottle. For the two paint bottles that have no receptacles I attached Velcro to the sides of two of the paint bottles and to the flatter sides of the unit, so the paint bottle stays attached there when not in use.)

The paints are reasonable consistency, have good opacity, and mix well into one another to create different colors. Rather than the standard fare primary colors that you find in most children's paint sets, these colors are more reminiscent of those glow-in-black-light posters you'd find at places like Spencer gifts, an effect not diminished by the fact that some of the supplied cards are black on one side. Supplied colors include blue, pink, green, red and yellow. The included glitter is standard gold and silver, each in a small vial that looks absolutely nothing like a crack vial from the 80's so don't even think about that. The paints are in non-refillable bottles so you have two options when they run out: Fork over $15 (yes, more than 50% the cost of the whole toy!) for the My Art Spinner Refill kit, or get creative with refilling the empty bottles. A small syringe and some lightly watered down finger paint will work to refill the empties. You'll need to experiment with paint consistency to get it right though; too thin and it will spray everywhere when trying to paint, too thick and it won't give you that nice radial-splay look you're going for. Note that the official refill kit doesn't include glitter, but it's just plain ol' glitter that you can get at any craft store anyway. For replacement cards you can use the refill kit, or you can just cut down some suitable card stock. Semi-glossy paper seems to work best.

Battery life is very good with one "C" cell battery easily lasting a month of near-daily use with no noticeable fade on motor power. The motor is quiet too, virtually inaudible at a distance of about five feet. One small annoyance about the motor is that it has virtually zero torque. I recognize the necessity of this in order to keep children's fingers safe, but the trade-off is that you pretty much can't use anything other than drip paints in your creations. Try to use, say, a magic marker on the spinning card and the motor will instantly slow down to a crawl as it tries to overcome the pressure of the marker. I had similar results with even a small paint brush and watercolor paints.

The "splash ring" is a special case. It sits on top of the base and keeps paint splatter (outside of the unit) to a minimum. In practice, splatter is pretty much nonexistent provided your artist doesn't go nuts with the paint so the splash ring does its job nicely. The problem is that the ring is really, really, REALLY cheap clear plastic. At first glance it looks exactly like a piece of packing material that you'd throw away, and in fact I did exactly that when I first unpacked it. Alex Toys would seem to agree with this because there's a sticker on the ring that says that it's part of the toy and not packing material. After just one too-quick tug by my daughter part of the ring broke - not enough to make it useless, but it was annoying nonetheless. Clearly, this is a toy piece that is in need of a serious redesign.

Cleanup is generally easy. When wet the paint wipes off easily with a little soap and water or glass cleaner. When dry, it acquires a slightly rubbery feel and can be peeled off the plastics with a minimum of effort. For more severe cleaning a trip to the kitchen sink provides a good cleaning environment. It's important to note that the paint dries fairly quickly, and when dry the paint is fairly permanent on porous surfaces like clothes and carpeting. When wet you can quickly soak it and scrub it and get 98% of it out, but once it's dry you pretty much have to live with a stain.

Overall, this is an excellent toy with just a few quicks and shortcuts that make it a little annoying, but not annoying enough where I wouldn't recommend it to other parents (and kids).

I highly recommend it especially for the low Amazon sale price! My 6 year old daughter and 4 year old son both love it, want to do more and more art with it and both have a very easy time operating it and they get beautiful results every time. Even my 1 1/2 year old son loves watching it work. I even have fun doing it and we will definitely use our art to make cards for family/friends or just hang up and enjoy. The only drawback is it is a little time consuming peeling off the paint from the unit after it has dried already, but hey, there's cleanup involved w/ any art project so it's to be expected. I read on another review that the paint stains fabric, but I didn't find that the paint flies around too much, so none of us got any paint on our clothing. Also, I like the paint they include since is dries really nice and doesn't crack/peel like other cheap children's craft paint. Buy it and enjoy! :-)

Kids love it and it's easy to set up and a minor challenge to clean with dye-fast colors. The colors DO NOT come out of clothing so I'd recommend getting a different type of base for the pigments when dealing with this toy. It takes up little space and clean-up is pretty easy. Overall, we love it.

I have 5 grandchildren whose ages range from 2 to 7 (2 boys and 3 girls) and I'm always looking for fun things to do with them when I visit. This product was a gold mind. They all LOVED playing with this toy. It's creative, fun and exciting. My one grandson (age 4) was so excited, he kept jumping up and down the entire time we played with it. He kept saying "I love this game - it's so much fun!!!" I highly recommend this for children who love to use paints and are looking to tap into their creative minds. Very easy for the children to use and assembly is quick and easy. I plan on buying this product so we can play with it again very soon.

This toy is plenty entertaining for a short wile. It is great fun to make the art, and the paint colors are bright and contemporary (neon green, yellow, coral, blue, and purple). The spinner is seemingly durable, powered by one C-cell battery (which is not included).

But, consider --

The bottles of ink are teeny-weeny -- .6 fl oz each -- about the size of a small hotel shampoo bottle. The jars of glitter are even tinier. Although the kit contains glitter, there is no glue to apply it. The glitter seems like a bit of an afterthought. And for some reason, even though there are five colors of paint, spinner device contains only three holes to hold the paint.

The cards to paint on are tiny as well -- there are ten cards that are about 4"x 4" each, and another ten cards that are about 3" x 3". Half are black and half are white. You may be able to make "beautiful art" (says so right on the box) but at 3" x 3", it's hard to make much of a statement.

The kit contains a clear plastic "splash guard" That is labeled in tiny font as such, along with a "do not discard" warning. If you happened to overlook the label, you would likely discard the splash guard, as it is indistinguishable from much packaging.

I have a similar spin-art painter from Crayola, the color spinner -- hard to say which one of these two items would be preferable. This Alex spinner is battery-operated, the Crayola one is not. This Alex spinner definitely has cooler paint colors. The Crayola spinner has circular pieces of cardboard to paint on. They are much larger and the shape is more interesting. Either kit would be fun for kids. Once or twice.

This would be a fun toy to play with once or twice, but I wouldn't expect it to be something you will return to again and again. And if you purchase it, don't forget to get a C-cell battery.

My 4 1/2 year-old son got this from Santa yesterday and loves it! He and his 3 year-old sister had sooooooo much fun making spin art this morning. There's no bells and whistles to this unit, but simple isn't a bad thing! It is very easy for both of my children to use. I wouldn't necessarily let them play with it unsupervised because I'd have paint all over the place, but an older child should be fine. You will definitely need to order/purchase the refill kits...especially if you have to little ones.

Purchased this for our nephew's 4th birthday party. Ordered 2 so we could wrap one for his gift and use one for the party. Good thing, as the paper and paint were missing from 1 unit. I had ordered extra paint, and cut more card stock after printing his name and date and a place for the artist to put their name on the back. I set up both machines at the party and the kids took turn creating their art, which was hung up on a bulletin board to dry and so everyone could see. Once dry, the cards were flipped over on the board, so the names could be seen, and was placed at the front door. As the kid's left, they picked up their souvenir. I heard every kid asked their parents if they could get their own spin art machine.

I recommend adult assistance, also, let the child put 4-6 drops of different color paint on the card, then turn on the machine. Once it gets to speed, add another 6 drops as it spins. Remove the card from the machine. Add glitter, shake off excess and hang to dry for about 45 minutes.
Cleanup took 3 minutes - Handwash the top in the sink with the spray nozzle and water. Dry paint will easily peel off the plastic

My kids love it and it keeps them busy, but it is messy! It does splatter a bit and it DOES NOT come off of clothing. I can't believe they would make any kid toy without using washable paints????

I bought this for my grandson's fifth birthday. I remembered having one as a kid and also doing this at the county fairs. It was very popular because it took no talent at all! My grandson (AND my son) love it. Make sure you also get the batteries for it if it is a gift so they play right away. Nice, simple, fun toy.

my kids beg to play with this toy. It can be a bit messy and time consuming to keep it clean ( you have to wipe the paint off the sides often) but they love it!! It's as sturdy as a $20 toy can be.