Are regular crayons too small for your hands or prone to rolling off your table and getting all over the floor? Don’t worry, Crayola has your back with triangular crayons that “promote proper writing grip” and are “anti-roll®” (that registered sign isn’t a joke by me, it’s actually on the box). They are available in your standard pack of 8, or, as in my case, 16 (and maybe larger packs, but I can’t find any), and I’ve been seeing them pop up in stores recently*. But are they the right fit for you?

From what I can tell, the colors here are exactly the same as in all other Crayola crayons so I won’t be going over them here (Colors–Review). The pack comes in a standard cardboard box (a little rough around the edges) with a cardboard tray inside and two plastic dividers to hold the crayons in place. It’s a pretty sturdy system and none of my crayons were broken or significantly worn.

The bodies of the crayons themselves are quite a bit larger than your average crayon, being triangular in shape (with rounded corners) with each face being just shy of a half an inch wide. They’re wrapped with a craft-paper-esque standard Crayola wrapper and have a step down about a half-inch from the front followed by a triangular point. From the box they are super comfortable, resting nicely in the hand with the paper being both warm-feeling and giving enough friction to prevent the hands from slipping. They work well both for children without fine motor skills and adults with larger hands (though the grip is actually surprisingly small). And they perform just as well as any other Crayola crayons (that is to say, very consistently and pretty good for a wax crayon, but not much use for blending or layering).

I’d say the gimmick works, if you (or whoever you’re buying them for) were having problems with regular crayons being uncomfortable, held wrong, or in a constant state of rolling off the table. They are a fairly inexpensive solution, though that shows: imperfections in the wax mixture and paper application are readily apparent (with several noticeable chunks of crayon missing in some places). Maybe that’s just my pack, maybe Crayola’s manufacturing standards are going down, or maybe they were always like that and I didn’t notice. In any case, they are effective in design for both children and adults, and probably worth the little extra cost in crayon mass alone.

*Despite the fact that I peruse office/art supply aisle frequently I miss things just as frequently, so they might have been there before.