As you know I’m a massive fan of Halloween so when I heard about the first Mess Around Box being Halloween themed there was no way that I could resist. It arrived towards the end of half term and I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. I’d been looking forward to it for a while since I subscribed in September for £14.99 a month (I got an early bird deal…the normal price is £16.99)!
I love the idea of getting craft goodies in the post and I was excited about some Halloween activities that I didn’t have to think too hard about to keep Tiny busy.
The Spooktacular Box was crammed full of goodies:
- Cardboard box with a design which can be coloured from both ends
- Slime Play
- LOTS of Googly Eyes
- Four different colours of playdough
- Halloween stickers
- Pipe Cleaners/coloured matchsticks
- Frightening Spiders web complete with spiders
- Palette of 28 water colours
- Crazy Soap Body Paint
- Crazy Soap Colour Changing Bubble Bath
- Johnson’s Baby soap
- Jumbo glue stick
- Black card
- Mess Play certificates
- Monkey finger puppets
- Ziplock bag
- Balloon on a stick!
- Lots of purple packing material
It all arrived in a sturdy cardboard box which can be coloured in from both ends which is handy if you have more than one child. Nothing is wasted as the box can be used to make a Castlevania/Halloween scene and all the packing materials could be reused. I hope this will be true of future boxes as well.
I loved the Slime as I’d been wanting to make slime for ages but hadn’t been able to find a recipe on Pinterest that was simple enough, or that I had easy access to the ingredients for. Literally all you have to do is measure out some granules and add warm water. It took me two attempts to get it a right as I added too much water the first time. The goo can also be stored in a sealed container if you want to use it again. The box also comes with a ziplock bag to make a “Bag of Horror” with the goo and eye balls or any other Halloween nasties you have lying around. This will be fun for car journeys/long walks as long as you seal the bag carefully to avoid accidents! There’s enough granules to make plenty of goo so I’m planning to make Christmas slime too.
We really enjoyed making the ghostly footprints. We managed to squeeze all 3 of our feet on the piece of card supplied and it looked really cute. Using some other card we made more feet and hand prints to give to the grandparents. I think this will be a Halloween tradition every year so we can watch Tiny’s feet and hands grow. As I wasn’t looking at the instructions I did the “ghost feet” upside down but I think they look great either way.
Tiny absolutely loved the Crazy Soap. We haven’t had a bath without blue paint yet! As soon as she gets into the bath she points at her tummy and says “bloo!”. The colour change bubble bath was also a big hit.
One of the things I like about the box is that it isn’t just full of one use wonders. The paint, playdough, glue, googly eyes, spiders web, Crazy Soap and slime can be used again for lots more crafting fun. I even used the spiders web as part of our Halloween decorations!
My only complaint is the online instructions. I would have preferred a hard copy of instructions so that I didn’t need to have my phone or computer nearby. It would also be nice to have a checklist so you could cross off the activities as you do them.
I’m definitely going to try the Dinosaur Detectives box and probably the Christmas one but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to justify it after that as Tiny, at 21 months, isn’t quite old enough to get the full benefit.
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