Prank Sticker app
Beano-style fun
A number of apps modify photos by adding fun stickers to them. Dennis & Gnasher's Prank Sticker app is an offering from , a British comic for children that started in 1938. The comic is known for delivering anarchic humour through the misadventures of its characters Dennis the Menace, the Bash Street Kids and Roger the Dodger.
The prankishness continues in the app, which allows users to add cartoon-like gags to their own photos. Since my preschoolers are not familiar with the Beano characters, I wasn't sure sure what to expect when I downloaded it.
Surprisingly, my 21/2-year-old daughter seemed to enjoy the app instead of her older brother. I had to show her how to use the functions, which are quite simple. You take a photo or select one from your library and add various elements to the photo from the app's bank of more than 100 stickers. There is a selection of masks, tongues, hats, blobs, insects and gags such as a hammer, squashed banana and toilet paper, coloured splatters, speech bubbles and sound effects.
You can also hit a button to get a randomly selected item to add to your photo, which proved popular with my child. The stickers can be pinched, dragged and twisted into place, which is easy enough to do for kids familiar with using touch screens, although younger children such as my daughter would need help.
We spent half an hour clicking photos of people in our house and adding stickers to them to create our own original and funny portraits, accompanied by loud giggles from my daughter. The activity was akin to creating an e-collage, with the added bonus (for my daughter) of the additions being rather naughty. To add to the fun, some of the stickers come accompanied by sounds of flatulence.
This was the part that most perturbed my sister, who tried the app on her four-year-old daughter. She felt that the app was not as intuitive as some others designed for kids, requiring the parents to supervise even older children. For younger children, it would be better to use the app on an iPad rather than a phone, as manipulation of the stickers would be easier.
a bit of a lark and fairly easy to use, with stickers that are a hit with kids. It was good for Halloween photos, and could be fun with other festive shots.
Dennis & Gnasher's Prank Sticker app, HK$8 from the Appstore
