EDICOLA NEWS: THE REVIEWS nr. 231
album: Amici Cucciolotti 2022 (Pizzardi)
stickers: 476 (1-460, MS1-MS8, T1-T8)P + 72 cards (1-72)
starter pack: album + 1 packet 0,70€
starter pack: hard cover album + 8 packets 5,60€
box: 100 packets (6 stickers + 1 card per packet) 0,70€ each
“Welcome back Cucciolotti!”, A nice Christmas present. We hope it is a good omen for a finally peaceful new year, we all really need it so much. Someone would like two Cucciolotti a year. Perhaps an exciting idea, but not very practicable. Leafing through the album we can only renew the beautiful sensations and the incredible work behind it, you can understand why it takes a long time to think, conceive and realize it. Better one a year and well done, perhaps with several new features, this year is not lacking.
The total number of stickers is downsized as it did last year, from 512 we went to 476 including extras. Right number, indeed it could still go down to around 450 so as to make the collection easier to complete. The quality would not be damaged, the album setting could allow you to “delete” some pages without the general substance being affected. It is also a choice in line with the times we live in, with fewer opportunities to swap the stickers.
At this point, buying a whole box, we think that we could really complete the album. Not only that, with 600 stickers (6 per packet) you would still have over 100 stickers to swap or stick on diaries and notebooks. After all, this has always been a winning aspect of the Cucciolotti collection, many stickers are effective even beyond the album itself, for their images, phrases, mottos. In practice, even if you complete the album more easily, you will have a thousand other reasons to continue playing with the Cucciolotti.
The 2022 album seems to us more like a container of many stories, didactics and good intentions, more than a product structured by chapters, especially in the second part. Not being a Marvel comic it doesn’t need to follow the “continuity”, indeed this aspect makes it more interesting, because you don’t know exactly what you might find on the next page. In the first part, however, we have many pages dedicated to specific areas of the world and its inhabitants, of earth, sky or water. We have chosen to publish the page with the large image of a Gorilla, an animal in danger of extinction. To think that one day children can no longer see a living one, but only in photos, should make us think and a lot ..
The text is an integral and fundamental part of the Cucciolotti, it is not only didactic but an attempt, successful for us, to make children interact with the world and the beings that populate it. The choice to always set the story as a journey of the Nasons is effective, also because we can all take part in it, just work with imagination and dreams, qualities of which all children are healthy carriers, fortunately. By doing so, alongside the didactic notions, you can have fun with the many games and quizzes that the album offers. We adults should try too, to find out how little we really know about nature and its splendid protagonists.
Of course, there is also plenty of room for adventure, comics and the fantastic. As aficionados of comics we have chosen this page dedicated to superhero Nasons, that “magnificent 7” is also a tribute to a milestone in western cinema, of which we are equally lovers. What can I say, thank you!
We wrote that the album is a container of good intentions and important messages. Often the mistake is made of considering the Cucciolotti collection linked “only” to the protection of animals and the great work in support of ENPA. In fact, taking advantage of the fundamental playful concept of stickers, Pizzardi also uses the album to give space to equally important issues, such as the fight against bullying and racism. Because we are all the same, a concept so simple that children understand it well, much better than us adults, too involved and influenced by taboos, preconceptions and often unfounded fears.
Another necessary aspect is the culture of environmental protection, of our seas, our trees, our friendly bees, etc. Cucciolotti dedicates several pages to this commitment which has a solution only if it is daily; even through the stickers, these little paper friends of ours, children can learn how to live more in peace with what surrounds us.
The most significant novelty are certainly the cards. Goodbye little talkers! It was about time, sorry but we think so. We do not know how much children liked to find these small paper objects to deliver messages, but there are certainly many more children attracted to card games, just note not only how many products are on the newsstands, but how many other sticker albums are there. they made a fundamental aspect.
The 72 cards 2022 are graphically far from the past, they are very close to traditional trading cards. It is not just a matter of images but of the information we find on the sticker. The first 51 feature our animal friends, complete with different levels of strength, energy and value points. From 52 to 60 here are the Super Nasoni, from 61 to 65 the dangers and the last ones the specials, especially the 72. To find out more it is useful to complete the pages of the album with stickers from 451 to 458, because in the end stickers and cards are a whole, you cannot collect stickers without taking care of the cards and vice versa.
The stickers are always the added value of this collection, they are so varied that it is useless to point out, as others do, the special ones, they all are, in some way. Although the price of the packets has increased (from 0.60 to 0.70), the offer always remains among the cheapest in the panorama of stickers, taking into account, as just written, that the stickers are well-finished and with many different characteristics, a choice that certainly involves a higher cost in producing them.
Also noteworthy is the promotion on albums, last year, although low, they had a cost, now no longer. For both the normal album and the hardcover album, the expense is that of the packets it contains. Unfortunately, in terms of paper quality, the hardcover album is not valid. Unfortunately, the hated folds are present exponentially, a problem that we now find in many products from many publishers. However, it must be said that in the case of Pizzardi, they can be forgiven, given that the album is distributed practically free of charge.
(EN)