Peppa Pig Marvellous Magnet Book - Ladybird > Reviews (3)

Hollie received this Marvellous Magnet book two Christmases ago, she was (and still is to a point) a huge Peppa fan so was thrilled with the book - especially as it incorporated her other great love, magnets. Now, I'm undecided whether this should actually be classed as a book or a toy. It's book shaped with thick colourful pages, but there's no story at all and the pages are simply there to act as magnet boards.

The point of not having a story is that young children can use their imagination to position the magnets on the scenes. I can't remember exactly how many magnets came with the book but each character is represented including Peppa's family and the pick of her little nursery friends, as well as Mr Dinosaur and Teddy. These are all flat magnets, the character being printed on a tough multi-layered paper and stuck to the shaped magnet - unfortunately this use of paper means they're not very durable and it didn't take long for the colourful character to start peeling away. Mr Dinosaur and Teddy were lost within days of Hollie receiving the book, which was down to the ridiculously tiny size of them - I think the magnets should have been designed to incorporate Mr Dinosaur into George's magnet, and I'm not sure why they included Teddy at all really!

The scenes are great; brightly coloured and ones you'll probably recognise from the show, they're not scaled to be in proportion with the magnets and this irritated me - although to be honest I don't think Hollie noticed! The magnets don't stick brilliantly to the pages which caused some frustration, it's fine when the book is laid flat but as soon as you pick it up the magnets start sliding out of place. This is obviously a fault with the book as after it fell to bits I transferred all the magnets to our fridge so Hollie could play with them on there and they've stuck fine.

It really did fall to bits too, spectacularly! One day it started feeling a bit 'loose' and the next time Hollie picked it up the spine snapped - bin time for the book, although at that point there was still life in the magnets so she used them for a good while longer. Unfortunately, two years later we only have one magnet left from the set - a battered looking Mummy Pig. When one year old David started crawling he went straight for these brightly coloured magnets and (being paper based) they stood no chance once he started chewing on them.

The (not so) Marvellous Magnet Book is recommended for children of three years and above, Hollie had hers at two though and was fine with it. It costs £6 or so; I can't decide if that's good value for money or not as for a Peppa fan it would make a nice addition to their collection, but I personally think the overall quality is poor - the fact that it was rarely played with but still broke would put me off buying anything like this again.