Review: Moon Dough

Every now and then I like to take my son with me to a store and let him choose a toy, whether it's as a reward for good behaviour, a special occasion, or just because.  The most recent purchase was a product called "Moon Dough".  My four year old had a hard time deciding between it, and the Hungry Hippos game.  I opted for the less expensive choice so that part was easy for me.  He wanted to play it just as soon as we got home, and so we opened up the package and I noticed a LOT of instructions.  Like, a whole page of instructions on how to clean up the Moon Dough.  I should have been suspicious at this point, but my son's excitement was contagious, so we proceeded to take out the dough, kneaded it like the instructions said, and little bits of it kept flaking off and falling down.  It has a very strange texture, almost like really fine paper fibers that stick together.  It doesn't stick to anything else but it also seemed to have a hard time really lumping together and sticking to itself so there were little flakes of it scattered on the table and rug.  We decided to move it into the dining room where the floor is wood and easier to clean.  We put a vinyl tablecloth on the table to keep it clean, as we do when we break out the play dough, but the flakes of Moon Dough still ended up everywhere.  My son used the molding tool to make some hamburgers, which was pretty neat, but contrary to the packaging, it was pretty much impossible to make the burgers look "right" with a yellow bun and red meat filling.  I had also hoped that perhaps the different colours of dough would be easier to separate after playtime than play dough is (or am I the only one that has six cans of a brownish-blueish mixed play dough?) but that too was pretty much impossible.

Moon dough does have a few advantages - it never dries out so you can use it forever.  It also does not contain any wheat, so it would be well suited for kids with allergies.  It's also said to be Hypo-allergenic.  So if you are a real play dough hater, you might like Moon Dough.  However, I ended up returning our Moon Dough to the store, I was not prepared to deal with all the extra mess, and the more I read the information in the packaging, the more concerned I became about it - the flakes could get in kids eyes and require medical attention, and any product that includes a mandatory step of washing your hands with liquid soap after use makes me a bit leery.  In the end, we spent a few extra dollars and got the Hungry Hippos game which my son enjoys all the time, and it doesn't make me want to cringe every time he plays with it.

If you want to read more about Moon Dough, or buy some for yourself to try it out, you can find out more over at http://www.moondough.com/