Snappets

A few of you may have seen these around the internet recently, as the inventor, Zachary Opaskar has been trying to raise funds via a Kickstarter project, to put them into full production, so apologies to those of you to whom these are not new.  There are some fabulous creative projects on Kickstarter and the other crowd-funding platforms out there, but the secret to success on them – i.e raising the funding required (in addition of course to having a good project which appeals to people) seems to be about letting enough people know about what you’ve got. I’ve seen numerous worthwhile and/or creative projects fail to get the necessary funding, and can only assume that not enough people got to hear about them in the limited time available to raise the cash. However, I’m pleased to say that this project is not one of those and has already exceeded its initial funding target.

We were offered the chance to review Snappets with some free samples, and although as I have frequently mentioned before, the majority of opportunities we are offered are not pursued, as they are not really relevant to this blog or our interests, I decided to have a go with these as I thought they might appeal to my 2 boys.

Snappets themselves are a cleverly designed simple toy, which children construct themselves out of a large sturdy piece of  paper which is printed in full colour on both sides. The accompanying simple instructions  show you how to create a dinosaur head which fits over your fingers allowing you to operate the jaws and control the snapping action, which also creates a very satisfying ‘snapping’ noise.

At present there is just the T-Rex design, but with the help of the Kickstarter project, the aim is to create an entire range of different dinosaur heads – including some colour-in heads.

No scissors are required, as everything is pre-cut, and no glue is needed either since the toy is held together with just 4 integral paper tabs.

So, how did we get on? Knowing that these had been tested before on elementary school children, I didn’t think we would have too much difficulty. I was right about their appeal. The boys needed no second invitation to get started. My 10 year old was pretty much able to get on with it himself, but my 7 year old needed to be set off in the right direction first, as there was a tendency to rush right in there with enthusiasm, before checking which way round it should be to start folding. The most challenging part was getting the tabs in place. This was undoubtedly fiddly. In fact one of mine came off in the process, but as time went on I developed a ‘technique’.  After showing this to my 10 year old, he was able to do his own, but I needed to do all of them for my younger son.

Once completed, battle then commenced between 2 of the T-Rex! Fortunately the paper is good quality, and stood up to this pretty well.

With their fun yet educational nature, I could see these being really popular in museum shops, education packs and (possibly in a smaller version) even in party bags. We wish Zachary every success with his project, and look forward to seeing more of them.

There are still just a few days left for the Kickstarter project, which you can find here.

Or you can watch a video all about Snappets here.