Who Wins The Big Box Battle?
Coloring Books for Adults at Walmart or Adult Coloring Books Target?
Welcome back everyone and hope you have been enjoying this 7 part series on the best places to buy your adult coloring books from. In each of these pieces we have been doing an in depth look at specific big box stores and the quality of the adult coloring books they carry. With Walmart already covered here, its time for our 5h installment of this series to cover its main competitor, Target!
Pros of Buying Adult Coloring Books From Target
With Target you get somewhere in the middle between Walmart coloring books and those from say Michael's Craft Store. The price is a bit higher than Walmart's but not as high as some specialty books stores like Barnes and Noble. The quality of the books also tend to be a bit better than Walmart's, but not as good as something that makes it onto the shelf of Michael's.
Overall the best thing we can mention about the adult coloring books at Target is that the books are slightly above average in every sense of the phrase. From price, to paper thickness, to the intricacies of the designs; Target takes the cake for being incredibly predictable and reliable when it comes to adult coloring books.
Cons of Buying Adult Coloring Books Target
So unfortunately there is a con here as well. With adult coloring books Target, many customers have noticed that the coloring books for sale are usually the popular editions from like 18 months ago.
Now whether this was on purpose from Target (vetting the companies well to ensure they had at least average products) or if it simply happened organically; most of the adult coloring books sold at Target are popular titles from years back.
This may not matter to some colorers, but the biggest problem with this is that all the books at Target are either Animal designs or Mandala designs so it is a very narrow selection. Maybe a year from now Target will expand into other types of coloring books like Henna Patterns and Scenery Designs; but that may not satisfy a large portion of the market who has colored those in already.
While I would love to see Target take a bold leap on new ideas like Graffiti Designs or Landmarks from all over the globe; we wouldn't hold our breath...
Conclusion
So in the end, we can all agree that Target is the place to go for a slightly above average adult coloring book. Nothing truly stands out about the coloring books there, but there are no glaring red flags either.
Moving ahead we look forward to writing up next week's piece on the biggest contender on this list: the adult coloring books offered at Michael's Craft Stores!
P.S. If you haven't seen our breakdown of the adult coloring books Barnes and Noble, have a quick read as that would be one of the closer comparisons we have done so far to the books you would find at Target.