Reviews of Insect Paint & Play

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List Price: $25.99
Sale Price: $15.07
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I am sorry to report that the bad reviews were accurate: The paint does not stick well to the plastic and peels off after drying, also some of the paint colors were dry and unusable.

Since the paint was not working too well, we tried markers but they did not work either.

In short, the idea of painting bugs is so cool that I bought the product even after reading some of the bad reviews. These guys need to improve the product quality, and find compatible paints or make the bugs with a different material.

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I would recomend this as it was well liked by all the kids and they were anxious to get to painting them and playing with them.

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The paint does not stick at all. Waste of money and time and very disappointing for a 5 and 7 year old and their mom who should have donated this money to WWF. We did however use the opportunity as a consumer reporting teaching lesson writing this review.

Honest reviews on Insect Paint & Play

Don't waste your $ if you're interested in the painting part of these bugs. We were so excited for thismy 4yo son was bouncing around dying to paint his bugsuntil we started and the paint wouldn't stick! We tried the paint included, tried washing and drying the bugs, sanding them with very fine sandpaper and finally just globbing the paint on. It was very frustrating to a 4 year old and his mom.

I was very excited to buy a few of these sets for summer activities and now I will not.

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On a whim, I decided to get this set after hesitation. I just needed something to paint for the fun of it. Lesson learned: Don't use standard acrylic paint. The paint provided is a little more flexible but not enough for the legs and wings. The vinyl is too flexible and standard acrylic paint will crack. I learned that the hard way with two of the insects I painted. On the remaining insects, I tried an experiment. One painted with a fabric paint as a base coat and the others I used a multi-purpose sealer before painting (brand Americana).

Tulip Soft fabric paint works the best out of what I tried. Sticks to the vinyl and bends with it. I can bend the praying mantis and animate its limbs without worry. Other fabric paints seem to stick okay, though I can't say how well it will put up to heavy play. Applying the sealer also helped the paint stick. I wouldn't recommend painting this set without it.

Other paints to consider:

Liquitex high viscosity (Warning: Some pigments are not suitable for children in this line. These are artist grade paints.)

Americana Gloss enamels: I haven't used this yet on the paint and play set, but I have tested it on other things and found it to be flexible and secure.

About the rating: I knocked it down for quality. I noticed even in the gift shop I got it, there was a set missing part of a leg and there seems to be some variation in how well molded some of these are. I also had to file off some epoxy glue on the legs and areas it shouldn't be. Overall I can't say if this would be a problem for a child or not, but I'm fairly sure the butterfly will be quite a challenge and a possible mess to paint if the child wants to paint both the under and upper side of the wings. I'd recommend breaking that into two painting sessions. Educational value can be as much as you want. To make it more educational, try having your child look up real insect species and base them off those species. You can even encourage them to learn about each species they paint.

Please see photo examples in the product page. Also edited to add: Forget the brush... That goes without saying. I left that at the gift shop and used my own brushes.