Dollar Tree Crayon Testing

by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)

Having kids means having crayons all over the freaking place. People don't give much thought to the crayons they get but enjoying a good coloring session with my daughter means dealing with the breadth and depth of crayon industry and either enjoying or hating the experience.

Today I will review the 3 main brands available at Dollar Tree. This review is mainly for my sake but I thought I'd share in the fun.

Here we go:

The king of crayons is of course Crayola brand. At Dollar Tree you get 16 of these bad boys for a buck. Playskool is next up at a whopping 26 crayons for a dollar and finally Jot brand blows it out with 48 crayons! Playskool is known for many things but crayons is not one of them. They have been producing toys forever but I guess as many companies do, they license their brand to companies that make other things. Jot is the main brand of most of Dollar Tree's office supplies. Let's look at the different Red crayons first:

Both Crayon and Playskool go through the effort of naming the crayons and giving them the appropriate colored wrapping. Jot doesn't even bother. I guess this is where you are saving money. All the Jot crayons have a orange-ish color wrapping with no color names. In order to find 'Red' I had to compare 3 different colors that I though were close to red to find it. So that's a little bit of a bummer but does it really matter in the long run? Proly not. Let's draw a line:

We have Crayola ontop, followed by Playskool, and finally on bottom is Jot. At this point I am surprised at how well Jot is performing. I am figuring out that the cheaper the crayon is, the more waxy chunks are left behind. Crayola has the fewest, then Jot and finally Playskool. My next picture shows this in greater detail:

The Crayola brand (left) has a nice coverage and deep color, the Playskool is a hot mess that just smears the way around with not real coverage and finally Jot does a nice job but the color isn't as deep. Way to go Jot! Here are the same tests in blue:

Same results as the red crayon. So my summary:

Crayon is still the tops and a close 2nd place is Jot! The colors are not a rich but they will do just fine. The only other issue I have with Jot is the fragility of the crayons. The Playskool brand can be chunked in the trash. The wax is cheap or something. I realize they are 'washable' so maybe that's why they aren't as good, but any crayon is washable if you think about it. I won't mention that Playskool has asbestos in them or something...
Jot must be able to afford to make such a great deal with the savings of not printing the names on the crayons or having colored wrappers. Jot has a sharpener built in as well!

Star Trek Movie Review

I watched the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek this weekend and have a few comments.

Of course I am being nit picky but that's what makes it fun!

The movie is good. It's action packed and filled with decent acting and very good special effects.

With that said let the fun begin...

1.) Too many halogen lights. Has the distance future learned that LEDs suck as a light source? I realize it was an artistic thing but it was annoying to have that light glare in every scene.

2.) Like every movie made now-a-days the camera moves too much. It's wayyy better than Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay but still...

3.) The plot was waaaayyyyyy too convoluted. The movie was clearly built around a premise (the crew) and the plot came later.

4.) Was it just me or did the engine room of the Enterprise look like a brewery with a few computer monitors spread about?

5.) You mean to tell me that there were NO ships around Earth when Nero shows up? How many Star Treks does that make were Earth is left without even one ship that can defend the planet?

6.) If the 'red matter' was so powerful and could create a black hole when ignited WHY O WHY did they have to drill into the core of a planet to use it? Just drop it on the planet and go. Oh well, the whole drill thing makes for more excitement.

I still enjoyed it thoroughly and I am sure I will buy it or get it for Christmas so I can nitpick over and over again.