Back to School with Mabels Labels

Mabels Labels, you are a mindreader! Remember when I reviewed your Classic Sticky Labels several months ago, and the only thing I could kvetch about regarding Mabels Labels was that we couldn't split an order between 2 names. Et voila, now they've come up with the Mabel's Labels Back to School Combo , which has samples of their best-selling labels in smaller amounts. You don't have to buy each product individually and end up with far too many labels, which means I don't even need to split an order.

Mabels' Labels was kind enough to send me Ultimate Back-to-School Combo pack for each of my 3 kids. Here's what we thought of them:

The Basics
Mabel's Labels Ultimate Back to School Combo Pack consists of:

50 Tag-Mates -- The ultimate in convenience, these are stick-on clothing labels.
40 Skinny-Minis -- These are like the Classic Sticky labels, but smaller, so you can stick them on spoons, pencils, scissors and other school supplies.
16 Shoe Labels -- extra-rugged labels with a protective overlay
2 Teeny Tags -- These are sturdy metal tags, like the Bag Tags, but smaller.

The pack costs $39.99, which is roughly the sum of the pro-rated cost of each of the individual items.

The Bongga
The Ultimate Back-to-School combo pack has just the right amount of everything -- enough for everything we need to label before school starts, with some left over to label the stuff they're sure to get as Christmas and birthday presents, and the stuff I'll be buying halfway through the schoolyear to replace the stuff they're sure to lose or break. All the labels in this pack have the same great quality that I loved in their Classic Labels:

* They're bright, colorful and sturdy;
* They're dishwasher / microwave-safe and UV resistant
* In addition, the clothing labels are laundry safe (BTW, here's a tip: the Tag-mates stay really well on clothing tags, so if the clothing item does have clothing tags, make sure that's where you stick the Tag-mates on).

Also, my kids love the labels! The shoe labels were surprisingly comfy; The Pea made of point of telling me that she couldn't feel them at all when wearing her shoes. They really enjoyed choosing the color schemes, and took ages selecting which icon they wanted on their labels (finally they settled on a sea star, skull and cow). The labels turned out so adorable, the've put my kids into a labelling frenzy. I had to work very hard to convince them that they did not need to put labels on the leather car seats. I swear, if we had a dog they'd probably slap a label on him too.

The Blah
Some of the shoe labels we received were not die-cut all the way through, so I had to cut them out myself with scissors. I assumed this was a fluke or one-off quality problem -- but the important thing is that when I emailed the company about it, they immediately offered to mail out a replacement. So in the end, it is really great to see that they stand by their satisfaction guarantee (a full exchange or refund if you are not satisfied with any part of your order).

Also, the Ultimate Back-to-School combo pack is available only until September 25, boo hoo, so make sure you get 'em while they're here. You can still buy either the Big Combo or Camp/School packs, of course, but in my mind neither of these are as good a deal as the Ultimate Back-to-School combo.

The Bottom Line
Mabels' Labels Ultimate Back-to-School combo pack is all you'll need to make sure everything you send off with your child to school comes safely back home again!

I received product samples for this review, but no monetary compensation. The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own.