Ravensburger Hello Kitty Mandala Designer

I bought this for my 6 year old niece for Christmas. She (and I) found it very entertaining. It does reward imagination, so the more you play around with moving the wheel, the more you get out of it. It's a good design (speaking from someone who had Spirograph in the 70s - why give a child pins??) but this slots in - no pins thankfully. I'd have given it a whole 5/5 if they'd put in just a little more paper and a few more felts. But then, I'm probably just being greedy!

I bought this for my 7 year old granddaughter who was very eager to open the box and get on with making her designs. She sat for a long time and concentrated very hard on getting it right. Although it says age 6 on the Box my 3 year old granddaughter uses it as well. Although she finds it hard to stay within the lines she is careful to move it round using the arrows and I find it is very good for her concentration. It is very well made and extremely good value for money. All I need to do now is to find out where I can buy the designer wheels separately.

The product is plastic and well made.My gripe about it is that it comes with just one Hello Kitty stencil, so it's very limited in the number of mandalas that can be created. It's also quite fiddly to use.

Thank goodness i looked inside prior to wrapping this gift. There are just a few sheets of paper and a very small box of mini crayons. I have in fact paid for a plastic ring and base in effect. I loaded up the front container with some proprer colouring pencils and added additional paper as it would not have been much of a gift for my grandaughter to open Christmas morn otherwise. THe Hello Kitty brand is so popular they should do more to make this a substantial product for the money.

The stencil is great but the box has only a few papers and 4 -5 small crayons included. If it is intended for a present, one should buy something more to give with.