Melissa and Doug Decorate-Your-Own Wooden Princess Wand

I’m always on the hunt for affordable birthday gift options. As a rule, I don’t like to go too expensive; not only is it not great on the pocket book, but as one friend of mine put it, kids – young kids especially – don’t know the monetary value of things, so they don’t actually care if their gift is $15 or $30. But I don’t like to cheap out either – so finding something that isn’t too consumerish that still feels substantial can be a bit, well, stressful. But maybe I’m thinking about it too much.

A few birthday parties ago, the birthday girl received a wooden bead kit from Melissa and Doug. The mom who picked the gift murmured to me as it was being unwrapped, “That’s my stand-by gift.”

So when I was at the toy store the other day, I picked a gift from the same family: Melissa and Doug’s Decorate-Your-Own Wooden Princess Wand, along with another small gift. I decided to pick one up for my daughter as well and since she adores everything and anything princess, we sat down to work as soon as we got home.

The kit comes complete with pretty much everything you need: the star and handle to attach it with, glue, glitter, four paint colours, a brush, jewels and a few ribbons.

There is a little bit too much packaging for my liking – the paints, for example, were wrapped in plastic, likely to help them from drying out. Many of Melissa and Doug products available are also made in China. According to Melissa and Doug’s site, their products undergo rigorous testing and are compliant with the new US laws relating to lead levels in children’s toys.

Although the kit is for four-year-olds and up, I still needed to help my daughter a bit with this activity. She wanted some help twisting the ribbon around the handle and just didn’t have the hand dexterity to pull it off.

After being assembled, the jewels themselves came off even though they had adhesive on the back, which caused a bit of an upset. Tears dried, my daughter fixed the problem by reapplying the jewels with glue and letting the wand dry.

Be sure to properly glue the star to the handle – and then let it dry properly – before letting your kids play with this toy. My daughter was rigorously “bippity-boppity-booing” my husband and ended up flicking the star right off the wand and hitting his shoulder – hard. I can only imagine what would have happened if some other kid’s head was in the way.

Bottom line: All in all, my daughter still enjoyed this product. Be sure to make sure it’s properly dried before allowing your child to play with it. Or just stick with the bead kit.