Kid Pix is a new color painting program created just for kids. But you don't have to be a kid to enjoy it. As the wildest, craziest mix of unique painting tools and zany sound effects you can find anywhere for the Mac. Kid Pix stole the show during Apple CEO John Sculley's keynote address at last January’s Macworld Expo.
Kid Pix is so easy to use that even a young child can master it. The entire work space is visible at all times. There are no scroll bars, and all the program's tools are accessible from the main screen. You won't find any cluttered tool palettes or overlapping document windows.
The drawing and painting tools are easy to use, as is the Color palette. Rich tool has a unique sound associated with it that you hear when you use the tool. The Kid Pix paint bucket, for example, makes a splashing noise. The basic freehand drawing tool is the wacky pencil, which makes a scratchy sound as you draw it across the screen. You can select different line thicknesses and patterns from the palette at the bottom of the screen.
Several tools are unique to Kid Pix. When you select the wacky brush, the stamp, the electric mixer, or the eraser, the palette at the bottom of the screen changes to show variations of the selected tool.
Leaky Pens, Bubbly Paint
The wacky brush applies paint to the drawing. All the wacky-brush variations in the palette perform this task differently. One acts like a leaky pen, leaving ink that collects and soaks into the drawing surface. Another leaves bubbles in its wake. Yet another creates a variety of bare-branched tree shapes (you must supply the leaves) that spring up wherever you use it. You can avail yourself of more variations by holding down the Option key while you select the brush type you want.
The stamp lets you apply small pictures to the painting, accompanied by the sound of a rubber stamp hitting paper. More than 100 pictures come with Kid Pix, and you can easily create your own with the built-in stamp editor.
The electric-mixer tool operates like the wacky brush, in that it has many different variations. The mixer affects the entire painting, emptying all filled areas or creating snowflakes over an image, for example.
Because sound is an integral part of Kid Pix, even the text tool comes with audio effects. Each time you choose a letter, you hear it spoken in one of many children’s voices. You can hear Spanish-speaking voices in addition to English-speaking ones.
Kid Pix lets you record sound with each document, using either Farallon’s Mac Recorder, which requires System 6.0,7 or later, or the built-in microphone of the newer Macs. If a Kid Pix document contains a sound, you’ll hear it when the document is opened.
For those who are concerned about turning their Macintosh over to small children, Broderbund has wisely provided a Small Kids mode, which makes the full menu bar disappear. That way, children can’t inadvertently launch DAs or switch applications.
The Bottom Line
Kid Pix is a wonderful program. Children can grasp the straightforward interlace quickly, the sounds are a riot, and the program sneaks in a good complement of learning with the fun. There’s plenty of entertainment for adults too. Kid Pix comes with enough tools, patterns, colors, and innovative sound effects to keep kids — as well as the most jaded of Macintosh users — occupied for hours.
Somogyi, Stephan. (August 1991). Kid Pix. MacUser. (pgs. 71, 73).
Craig Hickman
Applications
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kidpix11.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
