Review: Cthulhu Wrapping Paper
Review: Cthulhu Wrapping Paper
Jan 25
One one hand, it’s almost a month after Christmas. Wrapping paper is probably the furthest thing from your mind. On the other hand, there’s only 11 months till next Christmas, and you might as well start planning now.
The excellent folks over at Gaming Paper haven’t been on the scene for very long, but they’ve made a significant splash in our little corner of the gaming world. Readily available high-quality grid paper can be a game changer (pun intended) for any campaign that relies heavily on miniature or counter use: Gaming Paper hits the mark.
Consequently, I was expecting great things when I learned that they were also making wrapping paper. When I learned they were making Cthulhu Wrapping Paper, I was expecting something…non-Euclidian. Despite my expectations, standard three-dimensional geometry applies.
The Review
Gaming Paper’s Cthulhu Wrapping Paper retails at $9.99 for a single roll. Each roll comes with about 30 square feet of red gift paper, alternately overlaid with the Elder Sign (presumably to keep the deep ones from absconding with your gifts) and images of Cthulhu himself. Per foot, it’s somewhat more expensive than similar, traditional wrapping paper of a similar weight, but at $10 not so expensive that you couldn’t afford to get a roll to cover a few things you were planning to take to a party for the local branch of the Whateley family.
The paper is reasonably heavy: comparable in quality to some of the nicer gift paper you might find at any big-box store around the holidays. The paper’s weight makes it difficult to accidentally tear while wrapping a particularly pointy parcel, but shouldn’t prove so thick that it would keep the intended recipient from the goods. That said, the paper’s weight can make folding the paper somewhat tricky, as it doesn’t hold a crease all that well. Most kinds of package tape I could find in the house seemed to adhere reasonably well to the smooth outer surface of the paper, a problem that is fairly common with other kinds of traditional wrapping paper.
In all honesty, the product’s only major shortfall is its lack of a grid on the “inside” of the paper, something to use as a guide to ensure that cuts, seems, and folds are straight. Similar grids are fairly common among traditional gift paper manufacturers, and I was surprised to find that the folks at Gaming Paper hadn’t used it, since the bulk of their business is, well, printing grids on paper.
In the final analysis, the paper is very good, verging on great. A grid on the reverse would serve the product well, but if you’re in the market for Lovecraftian gift paper…this is basically the best there is. 4 all-seeing eyes out of 5.
