Crayola All Grown Up Alcohol Markers Tested Against Two Budget Rivals

Introduction

Crayola has officially entered the adult art market with its new All Grown Up line, and the centerpiece is a set of 120 alcohol-based markers priced at $104. That is a bold move for a brand most people associate with 97-cent marker packs, especially in a market crowded with well-reviewed budget alcohol markers.

To find out whether the premium holds up, we ran the set through a series of side-by-side tests against two popular budget alternatives: a 101-color Shuttle Art set with bullet and chisel nibs for $35, and a bullet-nib Ohuhu marker as another budget benchmark. The results were surprising, and not in Crayola’s favor.

First Impressions of the Crayola All Grown Up Markers

Seeing the Crayola logo on an alcohol-based marker is genuinely novel, since the brand has never made one before. The set includes 120 colors, each with a brush nib and a bullet nib, and the barrels carry both traditional ink numbers and playful names like Periwinkle, Goldenrod, Banana Cream, Cotton Candy, The Void, and even Bare Minimum. The packaging feels polished and the naming is a charming, very Crayola touch.

But charm only goes so far at a $104 asking price. Online buyer reviews for this set have been rough, with complaints ranging from markers described as malformed, crooked, and twisted, to accusations that the product is a white-labeled item simply carrying the Crayola name. One recurring criticism: the nibs are bad. That last claim turned out to be worth investigating closely.

Blending Test: The Deciding Factor

Blending is the entire reason alcohol-based markers exist. Water-based markers absorb into paper and dry almost instantly, which makes smooth gradients nearly impossible. Alcohol ink stays workable long enough to fade one color into another, which is what made premium markers famous.

In practice, the Crayola markers struggled here. Repeated blending attempts produced patchy, streaked transitions, and after drying the swatch looked more like a cheap water-based marker than a $104 alcohol marker. Across multiple color pairs, the $35 Shuttle Art set consistently blended smoother and cleaner.

This was the clearest gap in the entire comparison: the budget set repeatedly outperformed the premium one on the test that matters most.

Flood Test and Single-Marker Coverage

Alcohol ink should spread evenly into a smooth, uniform wash. Here again, the Crayola markers needed multiple layers to fill an area, which created a wet mess that smeared on the page. The Shuttle Art marker achieved an even, full-coverage swatch in a single layer, and its longer nib behaved almost like a brush nib in daily use.

When one layer of a $35 marker matches two layers of a $104 marker, the value question answers itself.

Nib Hardness and Paper Scratch Test

The complaint about hard nibs proved accurate. A quality alcohol marker nib should be soft and flexible, bending slightly like a brush for more predictable strokes. The Crayola nibs are noticeably dense and round by comparison, barely flexing under pressure.

Using the clear blender to isolate nib behavior, the Crayola nib left visible scratches and indents in the paper, the kind of damage almost never seen in modern markers. The Shuttle Art nib left no indent at all, and the Ohuhu bullet nib performed flawlessly, with ink evaporating cleanly and zero paper damage. For markers at this price to scratch paper is genuinely rare.

Drawing Test and Overall Verdict

A final head-to-head drawing under identical conditions surfaced one last flaw: the Crayola ink dries unusually shiny, likely due to a poor ink-to-alcohol ratio with too much alcohol in the mix. The finish looked off in a way the budget sets did not.

The pros for the Crayola set are real but thin: attractive packaging and fun color names. The cons list is much longer: expensive, poor blending, very hard nibs that scratch paper, a bad ink-to-alcohol ratio, and a glossy dried finish. Notably, the set has already been discounted weeks after launch, which suggests the market agrees the original price was out of step with the quality.

Buying Advice

If you want an affordable entry into alcohol-based markers, the Shuttle Art set delivers better blending, better nibs, and far more color per dollar. The Ohuhu marker demonstrates how well budget bullet nibs can perform, making Ohuhu sets a safe baseline recommendation. The Crayola All Grown Up markers only make sense if the branding and naming alone matter to you; on pure performance, neither budget rival left any reason to pay four figures of extra margin here.

Conclusion

Crayola’s first alcohol-based marker set is a nostalgia-driven product with a premium price and budget-tier performance. The packaging is lovely, but blending, nib quality, and ink behavior all trail a $35 competitor. Until the formula and nibs improve, the smarter purchase for most artists is one of the established budget alternatives.