Bad Eggs (Babble)

We love to decorate eggs.  I actually buy extra egg dying kits around this time of year so we can color eggs on random weekends in winter or during lazy summer afternoons.  Usually we just go with simple colors.  Sometimes we put on designs with white crayon before using the dye, but that’s about it because that’s enough.  We don’t want to get too elaborate with something we’re just going to break, but seeing the brightly colored eggs in the fridge is fun.

Every once in a while, however, I’m tempted by more fancy looking egg kits, and when Mona and I were at Target recently we grabbed one called ‘Molten Magic.’  The eggs on the front of the box looked beautiful, almost like marbleized paper, so how could we resist?  For $1.99 it seemed worth trying.

Well, for my money I’m getting this blog post, but that’s about it.  I should have kept the box in order to ridicule ‘Molten Magic’ better, but we threw it out in irritation.

The box claimed it included 30 things!  Amazing!  What were those things?  Well, a small selection of cheap crayons with a sharpener to start with.  The idea is that you make crayon shavings and put those on the hot eggs and they will melt and swirl into beautiful patterns.  But the five year old can’t hold a super hot egg, so it had to be a little less than super hot.  Which meant the shavings didn’t really melt.  Which meant the eggs came out looking nothing like the ones on the box.

Now, granted, they are still kind of pretty, because random bits of color on eggs is just pretty.  And we ended up coloring with the crayons, too.  But this picture on a box would not have sold any Molten Magic kits.

Anyway, we already have crayons!  LOTS of crayons!  I did not need to pay for a kit with cheap crayons and a sharpener.  My kids declared it a big rip off.

But what of the other items you get with the kit you ask?  To make a total of 30 things you get for your $1.99?  Ah, well, there was nothing else IN the box.  You had to use the actual box.

If you cut the side of the box up into little strips and made those into rings, those were egg stands.  If you punched out the circles on the back of the box, that was an egg drying tray.  But here’s the “best” part.  Those circles you punch out?  Why, those are ‘Silly Circles.’ 
And apparently a choking hazard, the box warned me, but mostly they were ‘Silly Circles.’

Check out the silliness:

Yeah, those are great.  Sooooo great.  Even my kids, who can entertain themselves for a day and a half with a stick or a rubber band abandoned the Silly Circles.  But I’ve decided for my $1.99 to declare them awesome and to keep them forever.  (Or at least until the next time I’m in a cleaning mode.)  Maybe we can have a Silly Circle hunt on Sunday after we’ve eaten the eggs.

My kids were pretty disappointed with the kit, but it was easy to turn that around into something that made them laugh.  We made fun of the box and its features and I got them all giggling and, frankly, hanging out with my kids doing almost anything is a good time, so it was not a wasted evening by any means.

But it’s back to regular dye kits for us.  And I’ve been saving up a collection of empty eggshells with the insides blown out so if my kids ever want to do something really detailed and beautiful on an egg we can keep it.  (On a special shelf.  With the Silly Circles I’m sure.)