At first I thought, I should have read reviews more clearly because I did not realize that there would only be 13 sets and different letters posted on each side. This was a little bit annoying, because I really think you should have a full set of the popsicles, so you can line them up for alphabet learning. However, I'm not completely disappointed by these. My biggest reason for buying them was to help my child learn his lowercase letters. He already knows all his capital letters, so I want to use these to help him with his lower case, which can be done in a few ways. Sure, I can't put them all out with both uppercase and lowercase, but I can lay them all out as single popsicles with all 26 letters showing in lowercase. I also can flip them over and have all uppercase letters showing. In this case, my child can learn his lower case. He doesn't have to associate them with the uppercase ones, because that will come once he knows them all. Also, at that point, he can put them together and they only fit one way, so there is no way to accidently match the letter A with the letter n, just because it is on the opposite side. I do, however, think I am going to buy another set so that I can have the whole set of alphabet to use for other things. So far, I've only had them for a couple hours, despite my child's obsession with letters, he seems more interested in matching the colors together. I think in this sense, the letter recognition is a little to easy, since every letter can only match one way and with the same color. I think it may have been better if there was not as many colors so there was room for correction. However, I'm sure this was made as a self-correcting toy, but it doesn't allow for a child to really have to think about whether the two matching color pieces were put together because their letters matched. My son is more focused on the fact that the colors match and by default would get the letters right all the time, even if he really didn't know them. So in all, I am not completely disappointed, I wish there were more popsicles, but there are things that you can still do with these that make them worthwhile. Also, the material seams pretty good quality and better than really hard plastic which is nice for little hands. The letters may eventually wear off, but by that point, I'm sure my child will know his alphabet fully and want to use them for something else. For the cost, I think you get what you expect. I don't think that the price I paid was too much and the cost of educational, durable toys these days would definitely be more if they made the whole set single-sided. So I would recommend this product to anyone that really wants to focus on alphabet learning and not just matching of alphabet letters!
