Moon Dough? Moon Don’t…

I had this great idea around November time. I was going to be the World’s Greatest Mother in the Whole Wide World, and buy Sausage a shit load of Play Doh for Christmas. Each year, Hubs and I set ourselves a budget for her gifts (which we inevitably smash when we see some amazing thing that we MUST get her) and we’ll buy her a big gift from each of us, then lots of smaller gifts from both of us. This means we each get to choose a great gift that we think she’ll love. So my contribution to her pile’o’swag was a set of 18 pots of Play Doh, a Play Doh factory (with fully operational conveyor belt *GASP*) and a Play Doh barbeque (which came with this custom dough, supposed to be used for making burgers and hotdogs, which was brown with multicoloured flecks in it…I’ll let you guess what it looked like)*

Anyway, needless to say, the Play Doh was history within a  matter of weeks. Between the bits that got smooshed into the carpet, and the umpteen pots that got left with their lid off, very soon, our carefully planned Christmas budget was nothing more than a set of colourful pebbles of varying sizes. And, when the last piece went to its hardened afterlife, I must say I was filled with mixed emotions. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to pick any more of the stuff out of my rug, but I was also gutted that Sausage had little to show for her gifts from me, other than the now defunct moulds, presses and cutters.

When I saw the advert for Moon Dough, I thought all of my prayers had been answered. It promised to NEVER DRY OUT! It also claimed to be easy to clear away, as it just needs to be pressed back together to store, and is also hypoallergenic. “I gotsta get us some of that”, I thought. So I went to my nearest Argos and handed them an almost bewildering £22.99, for three colours of dough and three moulds. I was so excited to present it to Sausage, to see her face when she unwraps this wonder dough that may last her until her teen years!

Until we got home and actually unwrapped it, that is. Moon Dough is rubbish. I don’t know if we were using it wrong or something, but if you do manage to mould in into any kind of shape, you have to handle it with the touch of a classically trained pianist, otherwise it crumbles to a load of purple dust. And don’t even get me started on what happens when it gets on the carpet. Sufficed to say, I’ve spent an unbelievable amount of time hoovering the bastard stuff up, and we all know how much I hate hoovering.

Just to give you an idea, the picture that accompanies this post is a close-up view of the cylinder on my Dyson. Anything that you can see, that isn’t grey, is Moon Dough. I think we’ll be avoiding any type of child-centric modelling dough for the forseeable future. Or at least until they can come up with one that holds its shape, never dries out and doesn’t stick to carpets.

*I feel I should also add, more for my own amusement than anything else, the barbecue set came with these scissors, designed to round off the ends of tubes of dough, to make them properly hotdog shaped. Unfortunately, what they actually did was craft a perfect penis shape, complete with helmet **, out of Play Doh. I won’t lie, I found the Play Doh which was closest to skin colour and had a whale of a time, moulding dough penises and pissing myself laughing

** I can’t believe I just typed “complete with helmet” on my blog