Grab the Play-Doh. We have some sculpting to do.
Play-Doh has spent more than 70 years giving kids a colorful way to create just about anything their imaginations can come up with, and now the iconic Hasbro brand is finding a new place to play in the UK.
The official “Play-Doh” magazine is on the way from Kennedy Publishing, bringing the hands-on creativity of the familiar modeling compound into a new format filled with activities, crafts, learning and, most importantly, actual Play-Doh.
Because what would a Play-Doh magazine be without something to squish?
Each issue will come packaged with a sticker sheet, tool set and two to three cans of Play-Doh, giving kids everything they need to take the activities off the page and start creating. Inside, readers will find crafts, sculpting prompts and step-by-step instructions designed to encourage them to build along with the magazine.
That makes this considerably more than a publication children simply flip through.
The idea is to turn the pages themselves into a starting point for play, allowing a child to read an activity and then immediately grab the included Play-Doh and make something of their own. With more than 500 million cans of Play-Doh sold each year, there are already plenty of little sculptors out there who know exactly what to do once those colorful cans open.
Kennedy Publishing is also giving the magazine an educational side aimed at preschool readers. Each issue will include an interactive story, facts, a letter-learning game and a math page alongside its creative activities, mixing early learning with the tactile play already associated with Play-Doh.
It’s a combination that makes quite a bit of sense for younger children.
A magazine doesn’t necessarily have to mean sitting quietly and reading from beginning to end. Here, the page can ask a child to recognize a letter, solve an early math activity, follow instructions or create something before the Play-Doh comes out and lets them physically interact with the idea.
Read it. Learn it. Squish it. Build it.
That’s our kind of magazine.
For now, however, this particular Play-Doh creation belongs to families in the UK, where Kennedy Publishing is bringing the brand into the children’s magazine market for the first time.
Which naturally leaves those of us across the pond wondering whether we might eventually get to play too.
There has been no announcement of a U.S. edition, so we aren’t breaking out the Play-Doh tools just yet. But if the new magazine finds an audience with UK families, it will certainly be interesting to see whether the concept eventually molds itself into something bigger.
After all, Play-Doh isn’t exactly a small brand.
With hundreds of millions of cans sold every year and generations of children who have grown up creating with it, the audience already stretches far beyond one market. A magazine that comes with the compound, tools, activities and educational content also feels less like traditional print and more like another Play-Doh play set that just happens to arrive with pages.
So UK families, you’ll have to tell us how this one turns out.
And if it becomes a hit?
Well, Hasbro, we know a few Play-Doh fans over here who wouldn’t mind getting their hands on a copy.