Play Doh Doctor Drill N Fill: Decent Play Value, but no Educational Bite

By Joanna Norland on April 8, 2016 in book reviews, reviews

The Play Doh Doctor Drill N Fill (ages 3+, retailing for £13.99 on Amazon.co.uk) is a cleverly designed, reasonably entertaining toy. Disappointingly, however, Play Doh passed up a valuable opportunity to integrate education with play by teaching kids a little about their teeth and how to look after them.

Paging all Junior Dentists

My five-year-old daughter gasped with delight upon receiving this nifty piece of kit from her visiting gran. (Recalling my steep orthodonitist bills, my mother was understandably eager to steer her granddaughter towards this lucrative and ful-filling–ha ha–line of work.)

Easy to Operate and Clean

Mick Jagger with a moustache.

With my junior dentist chomping at the bit, I was relieved to find that Doctor Drill N Fill is easy to assemble and operate. The upper and lower jaw of the toothless patient click easily into place, and we both got a lick — I mean, kick — out of the tongue extruder, which extrudes a gigantic Rolling Stones-style red tongue between the jaws.

The jaws snap into a base that is fitted with three moulds for different types of teeth. Insert these into the jaw, adds some grey Play Doh for cavities, and you are ready to wield your battery-powered drill, wheel for making braces, and snazzy toothbrush.

The apparatus is mercifully easy to clean — a boon to parent who have logged hours extracting dough from the individual hair follicles of a plastic barber shop customer.

In sum, Doctor Drill N Fill is built to engage children long enough for you to finish your morning coffee — and to enable them to tidy it away independently while you scan the weekend supplements.

C’mon, Play Doh! Drill Deeper!!

So why my reservations?

Answer: The total lack of any educational component.

Where is the booklet about dental hygiene?

The zany facts about our pearly whites and their bacterial inhabitants?

Where are the labels?!

Play Doh did not even bother to label the three tooth moulds as incisors, canines and molars — let alone explain the function of the different teeth, or their position in the mouth.

And children need this information.

According to news reports, nearly half of British eight-year-olds show signs of tooth decay in their milk teeth, and in the US, tooth decay is the second most common disorder after the common cold. I would have appreciated Play Doh’s support for my (every-parent’s) brush-early-and-often campaign.

What’s more, a little information would greatly enhance the play value of an expensive toy.

It’s more fun to play dentist if you can lecture your plastic patient about the two-minutes-twice-a-day rule and proper brushing technique, or explain to him that tooth enamel is the hardest part of the human body and that your teeth are as unique as your fingerprints.

And what child wouldn’t giggle to learn that long ago, people thought you could cure toothache by kissing a donkey?

Play dough is intended to foster creativity. As a writer, I know that knowledge is vital nourishment for the creative impulse. So toys that foster creative play should also seek to educate.

C’mon, Play Doh! Step up to the palate. I mean, plate.

PS: Books to Cut Your Teeth On

In retrospect, I would have gotten my daughter a book about teeth to accompany this set. Babble.com recommends these titles. My vote goes to Open Wide, Tooth School Inside by Laurie Keller, which combines substantive information, great vocab and exuberant artwork.

Juliette Bottomley, co-founder of Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath, recommends The Dragon’s Dentist by John McLay, about a wannabe knight who gallops to the rescue of a dragon suffering from a black tooth. It’s a rollickly entertaining tale, and a good starting point for talking to young ones about dental care. And it proves Grandma’s point that dentistry is the road to fame and fortune.