Review: Crayola

http://www.crayola.com/

Children's Website; Marketing Tie-ins and Activities

Grades: 1-4

First Accessed: November 28, 2008

The art supply company's tie in website, including activities and marketing.

My Thoughts:

I didn't really care all that much for this site. It was not organized in a kid friendly fashion, being hard to navigate and relying heavily on text. It seemed to be a thinly disguised attempt to sell products to children. The opening page is mostly ads, with a sidebar that directs users to various sites...parents, educators, children. The coloring pages are nice, when they load, but the tools to color them online aren't even as good as the ones on the PBS site. They were difficult to use and limited. It was very frustrating!

I had had high hopes for this site, since the company's products all foster creativity, it would seem like the site should have had great visual impact and been innovative. Its not. It looks like a website template that I can get through Microsoft Office. Also, there were a lot of issues, at least on my end, with getting various features to load. Several coloring pages crashed. Worst of all...there were pop-ups. I HATE POP-UPS! On top of which, they should be ILLEGAL on kid's sites.

The Thoughts of Others:
No Critical Reviews Available