Cra-Z-Art 14608 Retro Magna Doodle

Product Information

Magna Doodle is a magnetic drawing toy, consisting of a drawing board, a magnetic stylus, and a few magnet shapes. Invented in 1974 by Pilot Corporation, [1] over forty million units have been sold to date worldwide, under several brands, product names and variations, including Tyco and Mattel/Fisher Price.

Magna Doodle is a children's magnetic drawing toy, consisting of a magnetic drawing board, a pen, and a few magnet shapes. It was invented in 1974 and over forty million have been sold to date. In Friends, a Magna Doodle is seen hanging on the door in Chandler and Joey's apartment, first appearing in " The One With The Hypnosis Tape" (S3E18). Different drawings and writings appeared on it in each episode, and some served as inside jokes for the cast. The Magna Doodle’s popularity has been huge – over 40 million of them have been sold since it was first produced – and it’s easy to understand why. Unlike drawing with pen and paper there’s no mess, no risk of the tops being left off your pens so that they dry up and if you make a mistake, rather than wasting paper, you just slide the magnetic bar across the screen and hey presto! Your picture disappears and you’re left with a brand new, clean surface to start again on. The eraser handle is at the bottom of the Magna Doodle – slide it from one side to the other and a long bar magnet, which fits snugly out of sight behind the screen, pulls the particles away from the top screen, giving you a nice clean surface to draw on again. The screen is made up of three parts: two semi-transparent plastic sheets which sandwich a hexagonal, latticed plastic sheet in the middle. When you drag the magnetic tip of the stylus across the outer section of the plastic screen the magnetic particles are pulled to the top of the liquid and can be seen through the outer plastic. The edges of each cell ensure that there is an even distribution of them across the entire screen. The particles remain happily on the top of the liquid in the pattern the stylus drew until the eraser is drawn across the screen.These boards can also be taken on car, train, boat, and plane journeys, and they won’t create a mess on grandma’s carpet the way paints might. Now I’ll admit right now that the nuts and bolts of how something is technically put together isn’t really something my brain seems to be able to grasp, so the actual science part of it goes right over my head. However, if you just want to be able to vaguely understand why you can draw a line on the surface of the Magna Doodle when the stylus isn’t really a pen, then I’ll give it a go…

A magnetic drawing board — like the iconic Magna Doodle — has long been a toy favored by kids (and parents!) because of how much freedom it gives them to express their creative side in a fun, no-mess way. The best magnetic drawing boards on today's market, however, have come along way from that classic graphite design. Besides carrying handles and tethered pens, you'll find multicolored boards, fun accessories, and some are even smartly designed to help build on language and motor skills.In " The One With Mac And C.H.E.E.S.E." a plot point is made of how Chandler attempts and fails to leave an important message for Joey in this Magna Doodle. The middle layer is latticed so that there is always an even distribution of the magnetic particles across the entire surface of the display. It’s actually a very simple device; a plastic screen that you write on with the accompanying stylus.