Holiday Gift Idea: Magna Color 3D Mess-Free Art Set

My kids love to play together...Okay, when they're not trying to kill each other, as many siblings do. In all seriousness, Sophie and Xander are the best of friends and enjoy doing things together. Whether they're building with blocks, playing with their electronic toys, or simply coloring, my toddlers are pretty much attached at the hip. It probably helps that they're a mere 12 months apart in age.

I have noticed that their favorite thing to do together is artwork. They love playing with moldable dough, paints, crayons, markers, and anything else that allows them to be creative. While I love seeing their artistic sides, this can be a bit messy, considering small children often get paint or market on things that aren't meant to be part of the art projects, like the carpet, walls, or furniture.

Recently, I discovered a great new artistic toy called the Magna Color 3D. With the Magna Color, there is no worry about the mess often associated with children's art projects. This may give away my age, but the Magna Color reminds me of a cross between one of my favorite childhood toys, the Lite Brite, and a Magna Doodle. This innovative toy allows kids to create beautiful, 3D pictures using small, colorful metal dots that are housed in color-coded "pens". The unique magic dot pens allow children to place the 3-D dots to color in the stencil design by either creating a single spot or make trails of multiple dots by running the pen across the magnetic screen.

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The Magna Color includes 4 pens, 160 magic dots, 3D glasses to view their creations with, and some fun, aquatic themed stencils to use. Of course these are optional, and kids can feel free to draw whatever they'd like on the board, too! The possibilities are endless, and kids of all ages will love seeing their artwork come to life. Of course younger kids should ALWAYS be supervised closely while using the Magna Color, as the metal dots can be swallowed easily. For independent use, I think ages of about 5+ would be ideal.

Here are some photos showing how the Magna Color works:

Here is the Magna Color with one of the included stencil designs.

As you can see, the back of the Magna Color has a lot of strange looking compartments. We'll get to that in a minute!

My daughter Sophie loves "drawing" with the pens. She was even able to follow the lines on the stencil fairly well, which surprised me. It took her a minute to realize that she could control the flow of the metal dots, but once she did, she had no problems at all.

Pretty soon, Xander wanted in on the action. Now he is younger, so he really had no concept of following the lines in the stencil. He had fun just drawing random things, and really got excited that he could push the dots around on the board with the pens. Pretty soon, Sophie and Xander were drawing together, giggling, and having a great time.

When the dots run out, it's easy to refill the pens and start again. You simply put the pens back into their compartments and slide all of the dots into a slot at the top of the Magna Color board using the included Screen Swiper tool.

Then you flip it over and give it a few shakes. The dots are all different sizes, so they should sort easily into the proper, color-coded compartments.

All of the dots slide into the back.

After giving it a few shakes, all dots should appear in their proper color slots, ready to dispense into the pens again.

I have to admit, since my kids are pretty little, we had to take the Magna Color away in order to sort and redistribute the dots into the pens. My kids did not like this one bit, since they didn't want to have their coloring time interrupted. Here's the face Xander gave us when we set the Magna Color back up. Isn't he pitiful?!

Luckily, setting it up for another round of art is a quick process, only taking a couple of minutes, so the smiles returned in no time. My kids absolutely love the Magna Color, and they could spend hours making pretty pictures with this mess-free toy.

I love the concept of this toy, and I appreciate the fact that everything stays super-organized with very little effort. Since everything is housed right in the product, there aren't any tiny little pieces getting lost. This scores major brownie points for me!

The only thing I noticed that wasn't entirely positive is that the Magna Color 3D can be a little tricky to set up. Occasionally the dots don't want to feed properly into the pens, which requires manually inserting them which can be time consuming. (Think of coins that don't go into coin wrappers straight.) This being said, obviously younger kids will have a hard time remedying this issue should it arise, and it may become frustrating for them. Adult assistance may at some point be required.

Overall, though, I think the Magna Color 3D is an awesome gift idea! It's easy to create beautiful pictures with, and I appreciate the fact that it's virtually mess-free. This would best be suited to kids 4 or 5+, but can be used by younger toddlers with close adult supervision.

HOW TO CONNECT :

Check out Magna Color 3D on their website.

You can purchase Magna Color 3D online at Amazon.com You can also purchase this product at Toys R Us, Wal Mart, Walgreens

You can also connect with Magna Color on Facebook!

Note for previous customers:
A small quantity of product shipped this past summer included malfunctioning pens.  As a company dedicated to high quality product, Tech 4 Kids, the manufacturers of Magna Color, would like anyone with malfunctioning pens to contact them at the following email: toys@tech4kids.com for a set of free replacement pens and dots.


***Disclosure: I received a complimentary sample for my review. No other compensation was provided, and all opinions are 100% honest and have not been influenced in any way.***