Kmart Back to School app review: celebrate in style

Introduction

The Kmart Back to School app is a fabulous way to celebrate this time of year when all the kids head back to classes and of course need new clothes for the school year. Despite the fact that this is from Kmart it's actually a game rather than a catalog of the store's offerings.

A Stylish Start

Back-to-school always means a new wardrobe for kids and with that in mind this app has been designed to give you that back-to-school shopping experience in a fun way. You’ll be able to choose from a variety of female “models,” all of whom look a bit different from each other. Pick your model and then have fun shopping through the closets picking pants, tops, dresses, shoes, hats, purses, glasses, and more. When you’re finished you can “preview” your look and even share it with friends.

Using the controls is extremely simple: just drag and drop the item on your model and you’ll instantly see how it looks. If you want to change your selection just drag and drop a new item over top. As far as the selection goes, while it’s not vast it’s certainly enough to keep you busy and create a number of different combinations.

 

Additional Features

When you launch the app you’ll be taken to a main menu where you can read up on Kmart’s newest looks: Bongo, Rebecca Bonbon, and Dream Out Loud by Selena Gomez. I was expecting to see some of their designs and pieces but no such luck. There is just a short text blurb about each collection.

What you can do is save your look in the My Design section and the idea is that you take this into the store so you can recreate the design in real life. Because the “models” aren’t real people wearing real clothes it’s awfully hard to get an idea of how the look would translate in real life. I mean what doesn’t look good on a cartoon model? It’s an entirely different story in real life of course!

While the app was cute and easy to use it wasn’t really what I was expecting. I think using real people or even being able to use a photo of yourself to dress up would have accomplished a lot more. It would have also been nice to see a larger selection of items as it feels a bit limited.

 

Pros

Pros

• Easy to use
• Fun game that allows you to create a bunch of different looks
• Easy to make changes to your creation
• The ability to save your looks to view them in-store

 

Cons

• Doesn’t really do much else other than dressing up your model
• Feels like they missed an opportunity here by not offering many features/functions

 

Final thoughts

Kmart Back to School leaves me on the fence. While it’s cute and fun that first time you play I can’t imagine myself coming back to it on a regular basis to keep dressing my model.