Crayola sent new Color Alive coloring books to each one of our Spring Story Contest winners. They also gave our family our own set of books to review and share with family and friends! This Crayola Color Alive review, along with the graphics, is created by Super Smarty Pants, an 8 year-old blogger. You can find my thoughts as a mom at the end!
Have ever wondered what it would be like to see your drawings come to life? If you do, this is the right thing to read! Crayola Color Alive coloring books are a great, new activity that is fun to do with family, friends, and more!
What Comes Inside
There are 4 coloring books you can buy, each with a new adventure inside! These include fantasy fairies, dragons, Barbie, and even Skylander. Each book comes with seven crayons and one of them is a special effect crayon. With the fairies book, there’s a pixie dust special effects crayon. In Skylanders, an ice blast special effect crayon, with more in the other books. They look like normal coloring books until you download the Crayola Color Alive app. Then you can take as many pictures of your newly colored coloring pages as you want! They will also come to life. Isn’t that great?
How it Works
You can use any crayons you want with these books, but be sure to use the special effect crayon because it will create some magic with the app. First, you have to download Crayola Alive App on your phone, ipad, ipod, or tablet. You’ll probably need your mom or dad to help you. After that, color one of the 16 pages from the coloring book however you want. Take the phone and line it up with the picture. Then, a 4D button and a button with a crayon will pop up.
Click on the crayon to unlock your special effect. To do this, have your device scan the crayon name and your special effect will be unlocked. When you go back, press the 4D button and your picture will come to life, including the special effect; such as fire, pixie dust, or ice blast!
Take a picture with your very own 4D colored creature! Plus, when you tap on your creature, it will do something special. For example, when I made my unicorn come to life, I clicked on it and – ta-da! – a rainbow went over it’s head and it reared! You can save your creature and then take your own picture holding it in your hand, petting it or kissing it, maybe even fighting with it – in your room, outside, or anywhere you want.
What I Liked
I liked that the pictures were creative and that it was it very fun for children like me and my brother to take pictures – as many as we want – with our very own animals. I think it was the most fun 
because you could make it grow bigger or smaller. By doing this, you could put it on the floor to make it look bigger, like a miniature pony for the unicorn. You could also make it look smaller on your hand, like holding a fighting Skylander.
What I Would Change
Sometimes it’s hard to get the app to scan the special effects crayons and recognize the wording. Also, some of the special effects crayons looked the same, even though they had different names. We had trouble getting the creatures, animal, or Skylander to move on the screen at times.
Thanks to Crayola for sponsoring our Spring Story Contest! If you haven’t read the winning stories yet, you can find them here.
The price is $6.49 and the app is free, which I think is a very good price. Crayola Color Alive books are very fun and worth getting. I shared them with my neighbors, brothers, and cousins and everyone loved trying them. We hope you liked this review and will come back soon!
Mom’s Thoughts
These new and innovative coloring books are unlike anything we’ve tried before. The books engaged and intrigued kids from 3 to 9. Each child eagerly colored and page and enjoyed seeing their creation come to life.
The app itself is easy to download and Super Smarty Pants primarily figured it out on her own. Some of the features were a bit tricky and selfie pictures tended to come out blurry (as you can see from our photos). Learning to use it takes some patience. We still haven’t perfected moving our characters the way we’d like, but the kids have enjoyed hours of fun with these books.
If you’re curious about how Color Alive works, To try the making your own 4D image using a sample page. You won’t be able to see special effects, but you can play with the app and see your creation come to life!
Wow that is so cool! That price isn’t bad, either!
This is so cool, kids have way better gadgets and toys then when I was little.