Toy Review: Aquadoodle Travel Go N Doodle

My husband and I bought this Aquadoodle Travel Go N Doodle board for our daughter's 2nd birthday since it seemed like a good product and we wanted her to have a doodle board to be able to draw without making a mess. This Aquadoodle Travel toy is similar to magnetic doodle boards, but it uses a pen filled with water instead of a magnet to make drawings.

This particular Aquadoodle Travel Go N Doodle board is marketed as being great for kids to travel with, but I'm not sure why that is. The Aquadoodle Travel's magic water pen only holds a tiny bit of water. After about 15 minutes of continuous drawing, the magic water pen runs dry and either my husband or I have to refill it for my 2-year-old if she wants to continue to draw. Anyone who travels via automobile should know that it's not convenient to refill a pen with water while in a car.

Another reason this toy is not good for travel is because the magic water pen is not attached to the Aquadoodle Travel board. If the pen gets dropped in the backseat of our car (it does get dropped), my strapped-in 2-year-old has no way of reaching for it. I either have to pull over to locate the dropped pen for her or she has to wait until we reach our destination for me to be able to retrieve it. While she waits she is not able to draw.

Despite the Aquadoodle Travel toy not being good for travel, it does have one really nice and convenient aspect. This toy not only allows a child to draw on one side of the board like a regular doodle board might allow, but can also be turned around and drawn upon on the other side! While my daughter draws on the second side, the drawing on the first side dries off and begins to disappear.

Since the Aquadoodle Travel toy drawings disappear instead of being erased like a regular magnetic doodle pad, I find this feature both handy and frustrating. It's handy since a young child might not have the skills to pull down on a regular doodle board's erase tab to erase a drawing. With disappearing drawings, a young child will be able to start over with a clear Aquadoodle Travel doodle pad in about a minute.

My other thought about the drawings disappearing is a frustrating one. While my daughter is or I am tediously drawing a nice house plus car and a Mommy, Daddy, toddler and baby all standing outside that house, half of our drawing is gone when we've finally completed the picture. As a mommy who still loves drawing on doodle boards, this feature is rather disappointing since our special drawings evaporate before we're able to see the finished artwork.

Despite my motherly opinion of the Aquadoodle Travel toy, it is a toy and toys are usually bought and given to children, not mothers. This Aquadoodle Travel toy probably wasn't made with artistic mommies in mind but for young children instead. My daughter likes drawing what she thinks are mommies, daddies, babies (although they look like lines or dots to me), but often when she goes to play with her Aquadoodle Travel she finds that her magic water pen is dry. Of course she brings the pen to me to refill it, which probably takes some of the fun out from playing with her toy right when she wants to.

The bottom line from this mommy is that the Aquadoodle Travel is an okay toy for a young child learning the skill of drawing, but a disappointment for parents or older children who love to draw and admire their artwork.