Easter can't help but conjure up thoughts of chocolate bunnies, gooey marshmallow Peeps and jelly beans. Lots and lots of jelly beans. Yet no Easter basket is complete without a few colored Easter eggs. And for that, we have William Townley to thank.

In the late 1800s, the Newark, N.J., drugstore owner invented the aspirin-sized dye tablets we use today in record numbers. (According to a recent survey, the average American decorates 17 eggs at Easter.) When the product quickly caught on, he renamed his business PAAS Dye Co., from "Passen," the word used for Easter by his Pennsylvania Dutch neighbors.

Much has changed, though, in the 125 years since customers could purchase packets of five colors for 5 cents. Today's consumer can choose from more than a dozen PAAS decorating kits, all of which include bendable egg dippers and built-in drying racks on the boxes. This year counts seven new "egg-straordinary" decorating products ($1.99 to $4.99) that in addition to the standard color tablets include stickers, magic crayons, glitter and tiny plastic beads.

As novel as the kits appear, some work better than others.

Maybe it's because they have three older brothers, but my 12-year-old twin daughters were most excited about the new "Camo" kit, and the opportunity to try their hands at creating the splotchy camouflage-patterned orbs pictured on the box. The new "Hologram" and "Zoo Fun" kits looked cute enough, but because they use stickers to dress up the colored eggs, both were quickly dismissed as too babyish for a middle schooler. But they'd be great for the younger child.

Turns out, my little grown-ups should have read the Camo box a bit more carefully. Especially since in preparation, they took great care to dye several eggs a drab olive green.

"Aw, it's only stickers, too!" they wailed in chorus, after dumping out the contents of the box and discovering the trendy black and tan splotches on the eggs were, indeed, just squiggly stickers.

Any disappointment, though, was temporary. Being girls, they had almost as much fun deciding which stickers to use, and where to place them for the greatest military effect, as they would have painting them on or using a combination of dyes. And Mom, whose fingertips were already stained purple from the dye (I followed PAAS's advice and added a few tablespoons of vinegar to the egg wash to make the colors brighter and deeper) certainly appreciated the non-mess factor.

The same couldn't be said for the two other decorating kits my daughters liked even better, the new "Beaded" and "Stencil" kits. The Beaded kit comes with a small tube of glue, a tube of glitter, and four bags of tiny colored beads. Yet the glue, which the girls applied to the eggs using a cotton swab, wasn't great (too many beads ended up falling off) and the glitter, while pretty, was a runny mess (they had to settle for swirls instead of lines). Still, they enjoyed the chance to show off their artistic side, even if it required some patience. Verdict: put down a lot of newspaper, steer the kit toward your older kids, don't worry about perfection.

We had better luck with the stencil kit, which comes with a variety of paper stencils, a paintbrush and three small pots of paint. It took a few tries to figure out the correct amount of paint (less is more), but both girls managed to decorate the eggs with pretty flowers, butterflies, ducks and bows.

"Hey, this isn't too hard," one girl declared, smiling.

"Yeah, it's the best," her sister agreed.

Now, if I could only get them to actually eat the eggs ...