Heidi Swap Boxed Chipboard Alphabets

From the growing range of Heidi Swapp products come the Boxed Chipboard Alphabets. This is a review of the 3" pink, upper and lowercase letters. First off, for our international audience, the chipboard referred to is NOT wood, but a thick heavy cardboard.

The letters are nicely packaged (as is most Heidi Swapp stuff) in a glossy black box with pink label. The box is nice in that it protects the letters. However, when I pulled mine out of the box, they all had a definate warp. Normally, I would attribute this to over tight shrink wrap, but these were not wrapped as such.

The colour is added as a layer to the cardboard and seems pretty robust. Since it is card, these letters would be fairly easy to distress, paint or do just about anything to. Also, you get to keep the negative and use that as well.

In the uppercase set, you receive one of each letter of the alphabet, and a full set of numbers (0-9). In the lowercase set, you receive 3 each of a, e, i and o, 2 each of h, l, m, n, r, s, t and u, and one each of the rest. You also receive punctuation of !, &, #, ?, :, . and ,

It is with letter distribution that I have my biggest problems with this set. Yet again, we see a manufacturer not thinking or not caring about the consumer. We are in the first decade of a new century, therefore, when most people are writing the date they will need more than ONE zero and ONE two!!!! Basically, if you want to use these sets to write the year 2005, you will need to buy two sets of the uppercase letters. At approx. $11 AU per set, that makes for a very expensive year.

In the lowercase the issue is slightly different, this one is about wasted space. Insdead of putting multiple items where possible, they are just put in the middle of the square. I can understand that one per square is necessary for items such as letters and some punctuation, but in the examples below, you could get at least four of the punctuation symbols on each square without reducing usability, infact, you would increase it considerably.

Also to be considered is the slightly misleading name of the items. While the full square is 3", the actual letters are NOT that size. The uppercase are 2 1/4" tall and the lower cases just over 1 1/2" tall (for an "a", taller letter would be slightly bigger). When you are wanting impact, there is a big difference between 3" and 2 1/4".

Pros: Great way to add emphasis or visual impact to a title or page. Versitile materials mean they can be customized easily and in a large variety of ways.

Cons: Lack of relevant numbers in uppercase set and wasted space in lowercase letters detract from the value and usability of these products. Also, the fact that they letters (uppercase) are not true 3" in size but 2 1/4".

Quick Review (Out of 5 Stars)

Cost/Value for Money: 2
Usefulness: 3
Ease of Use: 5