Roald Dahl Wall Sticker: Matilda On Her Books Review
Reviewed by Helen Wyatt
The Oakdene Designs Roald Dahl Matilda wall sticker arrived well packaged in a solid cardboard tube, clearly labelled. The RRP on the product is £21, and the sticker itself is described as being 37cm wide by 68cm high. Part of the writing on the sticker is blue text on a pink background, which makes it difficult to read. Most of the text however is white and therefore easy to distinguish from the background.
On opening the tube you are presented with some tissue paper to protect the contents; under that we found the sticker (rolled up as it is a long one), a small yellow “squeegee”, and instructions, which were inside the sticker.
The instructions look nice and simple, and indeed say “Apply in nine easy steps!”. On the back of the instructions it says “removable and easy to apply”.
The worst part of this product is unfortunately the instructions – they are clearly designed to be generic to all of the wall stickers, and the example in the photos is a short and squat sticker. Our product is long and thin. We therefore found that placing the sticker on the wall in the desired location (and securing with tape) didn’t work as described in the instructions as the necessity of only placing the tape in the middle of the sticker was not mentioned. This only became clear when we were unable to get at the next bit of sticker a few steps in (and had to improvise).
In addition the first step says to leave the sticker unrolled on a flat surface for an hour before starting – this is fine but our sticker just would not lay flat so we had to weight it down. It may have been helpful to mention this. Also whilst the sticker is apparently removable, there are no instructions included as to how best to achieve this if you wanted to.
Nonetheless, after a little bit of fiddly backing paper removal, it didn’t take long to “squeegee” the sticker to the wall, remove the last bit of backing, and admire our handiwork! The sticker looks almost as if it has been painted directly onto the wall. It adheres very well, and we did not encounter any air bubbles or wrinkles. The sticker is clearly a direct illustration from the book Matilda and is well printed, even though it is large.
Aside from some improvements that could be made to the instructions, the product is excellent quality and I would have no hesitation in recommending this.
The RRP at £21 does seem a little steep but you are clearly receiving a quality product for that price.
I would rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars – the half a star is lost due to the improvements that could be made to the instructions.
Rating: 4.5/5
RRP: £21
Available to buy from www.oakdenedesigns.com.
