This evening, dinosaurs attacked our peaceful little town. It started with a red T-Rex smashing his way through the nuclear power plant, an industrial complex, and then a row of town homes. A few volcanoes erupted, showering the town with fireballs. And then a green, spiny lizard thing smashed his way down the highway, taking out all of the cars and trucks in his path.
No, this isn’t the plot for the next Michael Bay movie. It was just my son playing with Crayola Create 2 Destroy, a new playset that lets you mold and build a city before smashing it with toy dinosaurs. Crayola sent us the Dino Destruction Metropolitan Mayhem version of the playset to play with (thank you!) and my son had a great time building a little city and then smashing it to smithereens.
The Crayola Create 2 Destroy kits come with a lot inside. Our kit had two dinosaurs, two volcanoes (that act as catapults), three tubs of the morphix molding dough, two long molds (to make various cars and buildings), and a play mat that had a city theme. It is recommended for ages 4+ and retails for $24.99, but currently is going for a little less on Amazon.
I do my best to avoid messes, so I set up the playset on the kitchen table. But I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of mess that Crayola’s Create 2 Destroy kit created. The morphix dough had a gritty texture that felt like sand and didn’t break into small bits like like I had expected. The dough had a heavier consistency, which made it easy to mold into the building and car shapes. Of course, the morpix dough dries out if you leave it uncovered too long, just like any other molding clay product.
The kit came with two long plastic strips that had several molds to create cars, buildings, and rail cars. The volcanoes had building and car molds on the bottom, which was a smart design idea. I also found that the dinosaurs’ feet had different markings so they would leave a “smash” or “boom” message behind when stomping on a building.
My one critique is that it was difficult at times to get the morphix dough out of the molds. I usually had to bang the molds onto the table a few times to knock the finished shapes loose. The T-Rex had a car mold in its mouth, which seemed like a good idea. But I was never able to free the car from the T-Rex’s mouth. Ol’ Rexy was condemned to a life of having morphix dough stuck in his teeth.
Overall, I found the Crayola Create 2 Destroy set to be a fun toy and it was the first thing my son played with after school several days in a row. There are a few different versions of the Create 2 Destroy product, each with different play mats and molds. For the price, it is a good buy for a Christmas gift. My son had fun with it, the box comes with plenty of stuff, and it is low mess.
Win a Crayola Create 2 Destroy Playset
You can win your very own playset by leaving a comment below. I will randomly draw a winner from those who leave a comment before 11:59 pm pacific time on Friday, November 8, 2013. Retail value of the prize is $24.99.
Update: We have a winner! Congratulations to Reese Walker who won the Crayola Create 2 Destroy playset. Thank you to everyone who entered.
Win $1,000 from Crayola
There is another contest worth checking out on Crayola’s Facebook page. You can submit a video of your child playing with Create 2 Destroy for a chance to win a $1,000 gift card.
And while you’re checking out the Facebook page, we would appreciate your vote for my son’s video (labeled Dad Logic). If he wins the $500 prize for bloggers, he promises to spend it on something frivolous like candy and noisy toys to annoy dad.
Thanks again to Crayola for providing us with the sample product and gift pack, in addition to the second playset for the giveaway. We had a lot of fun playing with your latest toy!
I loved the video. You got my vote!
I bought this for my son the other day. Found it at Toys R Us. I was surprised that the dough felt more like sand than playdoh. It worked out pretty great.
Did the morphix stuff stain your table? That’s the one thing I hated most about playdoh.
We used the play mat that came with the kit, but I didn’t notice any stains in the areas where the dough came in contact with the table. The box says it is stain free, so there should be less of a risk than with PlayDoh.
Hey man. You got my vote. Good luck!
Um..yeah…I want to win this thing. Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?
We could not get the morphix in the molds to dry. I kneaded the dough quit well and we left it overnight and the morphix was still soft in the mold.
I don’t think you are supposed to let the morphix dry in the molds. You want to keep the moisture in so you can resculpt it. You just press the morphix into the mold to get the shape and then hit it on the table or whatever to knock the molded shape loose.
Ok, you are probably right, but that makes them super difficult to get out of the molds wet. The very small molds we let dry overnight came out of the mold great, but yes, this makes sense, can’t see how they would dry in the mold.
I had to bang the molds on the table to knock the dough loose. I made a couple dents in the table top before I was smart enough to put down a rubber coaster. My best advice is to just use a lot of elbow grease to knock those things loose. I found it was easiest to get the shapes out of the molds on the bottom of the volcanoes. The plastic strip molds were the next easiest. I could never get the shapes out of the molds that were part of the dinosaurs.