Has anyone successfully replaced a soft toy...

We have a minimum of 3 of each of the DCs favourites after I had a traumatic experience taking my DN out and almost losing her favourite.
The favourites live in draw string bags hidden in the very top of the airing cupboard, one per child, and are all on rotation, washed the same day as duvet covers and swapped with one from the bag.
If the DC are off school, they are told manky toy is having a holiday wash and will need an hour in the airing cupboard after the tumble drying cycle to fluff up, allowing my swapping to take place!
I am a bit obsessive about it!

She’s 2.5, I have introduced the imposter.

DS2 had a stuffed kitten (Sparkles) that he carried about by the neck such that it was a bit stretched. He lost it on holiday and it couldn't be found. I managed to get a lightly used replacement on ebay. In order to stretch the neck a bit DH had it strung up by the neck with a weight tied to it hidden in the garage. It looked like it had decided that life on earth had been a bit much...

Luckily DS didn't see it "hanging" and after a bit of roughing up we were able to convince him that it had managed to travel back from center parcs by itself.

He's away at uni now but Sparkles #2 still waits for him on his bed for when he comes home 😁

Yes! Butlins do this amazing service where lost teddy's go the spa for a wash and repair before being reunited with their families.

My SIL put some sort of tracking device inside Bunny . It means that he can use an app on his phone that finds it within quite a long range .

How old is your child? If you want the new one to be accepted then you need to use it alongside the original. It needs to age along with the other one or it’ll never work!

My 7 year olds soft toy dog she takes everywhere got mauled by our dog when she left it unattended for a millisecond. It was completely ruined and she saw it.

Together we looked up photos of what toy hospitals can do, really amazing before and afters where they toy ends up looking pretty much new. Then her dog went on a trip to the hospital. Except it didn't, we got a new one off ebay. She accepted it instantly and has never questioned it.

Brilliant 😂 our one seems to be quite rare. Medium fletcher bear. Managed to get one for £20 but if one appears on eBay it’s usually £50-100😱

I told DS the postman had washed him with special soap that made him fluffy

@Sexnotgender - that’s how we ended up with 4. I managed to get a spare of the discontinued toy but lost one so then bought every single one I could find. We did have 5 but one went in the wash with a red sock and is now ‘sunburned’.

We have 4 of my DD’s favourite toy. One is a little fluffier than the others. DD(5) thinks that her toy sometimes goes to the really posh groomers and comes back all fluffy.

We took a spare on holiday last year just in case. DD found it (DP had one job!) and we had to come up with some convoluted story about her toy’s cousin coming to visit - which she still mentions now.

On her 18th birthday I plan to put all 4 on her bed.

Not tried to replace yet, but bought a second of her favourite just in case. Once I’d realised she had a favourite I thought it would be easy to buy a second, fucking discontinued Jellycat 😱 stalked them on eBay for months.

Look for a book called Tatty Ratty. It’s a lovely story about replacing a lost toy.
Only our eldest has a special toy- she’s 13 and still very attached!
We own about 4 or them and til she was about 4, 2 of them were interchangeable. Then one got lost. Now there is only one! Completely irreplaceable since.

Yes I've done it twice. First time I said I'd machine washed her and that's why she was more fluffy and new looking. 2nd time she didn't question it.

They always notice. My son has Teddy and now "wrong teddy". He knew. But he also loves "wrong teddy".

It reminds me about my daughter and her small cuddle blanket thing. She has had it in hands in bed every single night for 16 years! It's manky, threadbare and generally disgusting in all ways.

A couple of years back I finally tracked a copy down. Brand new with tags (brand new condition despite it being around a decade and a half since it was made!) and I stealthily swapped it out one night. Needless to say, she noticed instantly and was horrified by it but it was a hell of a laugh in our house that night making her question her sanity for a bit. Totally worth the £20 for a useless item. Bright side is she has put it away and wants to give it to her first child.

Yes, just the other day we had to replace my 7 year olds much loved teddy. New one arrived (after much expense 😫) from eBay. I put it straight in the wash. I then took it to him straight out the washer, exclaiming - "look what I found!!" Basically I told him it must have been stuck in the washing machine for a couple weeks, and was now super clean 🤣 He fell for it completely ❤️

I'm definitely not an expert parent, but with DD2 bought 3 of the same, and have rotated them. She's now 8 and still has Owly every night. Or so she thinks.....

🤣 I had my bear 'refurbished' when I was about 5, and my grandma admitted it to me when I was about 10.
My daughter had a Paw Patrol Skye which 'flew' in the kitchen and landed on the hob. We had a chat to Santa who 'fixed' Skye and put her in DD's stocking a few weeks later.

My 3 grandchildren all have at least 8 of their favourite soft toy, whereoff one is staying with me for emergencies and one in the car. Oh yes, they know which one is the "real" one but have learned to accept the others as good replacements when their Wawa1 is in the laundry or got forgotten at daycare.

Yes but I wash soft toys regularly so they aren’t all grubby and gross anyway.

Dd1 wasn’t particularly enamoured by soft toys her pink rabbit that she’d had since birth was often found tossed in her cot, that’s until DD2 came along! Dou dou quickly became her rabbit. Eventually I managed to track down a spare on eBay, similar but slightly different arms and legs. Dd2 has always been aware she has two and could tell between them in the night by how they smelt. Bleurgh!

Dou dou 1 has traveled all over the world. It memorably was dropped in piss water as we ran to catch a ferry on a remote beach in Bali. And then got lost in a tiny sea side town in Cornwall. Dou dou was eventually found after a frantic post on a local facebook page. It arrived in the post with a postcard with a funny tale of its adventures and sweeties. Dd is 9 now, the now scraggly 13 year old dou dou is still her favourite. She still talks about the time Dou dou went on holiday in Cornwall.

DD1 was about 2 and fell asleep in her buggy with her chimpanzee hand puppet still on her hand. Of course it fell off. DM felt so bad she hadn't taken it off. We persuaded DD that he had just gone back to the zoo to visit his family. My brother somehow became implicated (DD suggested uncle drove him there).

Queue a lunch hour trip to the zoo shop and a replacement.

DD is 16 in a couple of weeks and she still doesn't know exactly what happened. The story of the chimp visiting his family has become a family story, and she obviously knows he didn't go on his own - but we have never told her the full story. It's too funny keeping her guessing.

As with other toys upthread though, she was really young and the toy was relatively new.

I haven't, but I remember my mum telling my little sister her doll had grown in the washing machine. Really poor Jim had fallen to pieces in the washing machine. She must have been 3 or 4 (I was a teenager).

" Told child that teddy had been to a health farm, which was why he was so "healthy" "

This has really made me laugh 😂