To ask you Playmobil veterans whether there might actually be such a thing as...

[vikjul]

...(gasp) too much Playmobil?

I really do believe in less is more as far as toys are concerned, but have never applied this to Playmobil and Lego, where it seems that more options rather add to the play value and longevity. But looking at my dd's substantial collection, with Christmas coming up, I am wondering how to gage whether there might be a point where I should stop indulging my own desire to acquire buying her more Playmobil.... So, anyway, I am a playmoholic and have my dd (6) loves Playmobil and has acquired the following over the past few years:

• Egyptian temple, camels, loads of Egyptian people & accessories (LOVES)
• royal furniture and loads of figures and every conceivable fantasy accessory (uses all the time)
• various babies, (uses a lot)
• lots of dollhouse furniture (uses a lot)
• loads of forest animals, trees, landscape pieces (uses often together with above)
• pirate dungeon (likes and uses now and then)
• huge play park and car (close to zero interest)

(In addition to this we have a lot of Roman figures and her older brother's dragon tower with dragon and various knights, used by dd occasionally.)

For this upcoming Christmas, I have already bought (but obviously need to hold back some of it):

• Pool (this is the one item she has asked for year after year, but considering her preference for fantasy/animals over eg the play park, I am not sure she would actually play with it.)
• Harbour café (would add to the pool & go with the park)
• African safari sets (discontinued, have picked up gigantic waterhole set & three smaller sets, I know she would love and use these)
• Monkey climbing tree (this I know she would love!)

So, Playmobil veterans, what would you do? Have you happily continued to expand your dc's collections, or found that eventually there is a law of diminishing returns here too? I see three options:

A. Give her the monkey climbing tree and the pool that she always points out in the catalogue, knowing that it will make her very happy but that she will probably not use it much in her usual eclectic scenarios. (And keep the African safari sets for another year.)

B. Give the pool to my MIL who never knows what to buy, enabling me to give dd the whole humongous series of African safari sets that I can't wait to openand the monkey tree - at the risk of overwhelming dd...

C. Just give her the monkey climbing tree and a few smaller safari sets that she will use alot and probably appreciate all the more for not getting so much...

(Other than Playmobil, she will be getting some lego, a board game or two and books.)

Sorry for long post, but as you will appreciate these are very important decisions and my DH is sick of hearing me talk about Playmobil.

Oh, just wanted to say a special hello to Normantheforeman, very nice to meet you, you've been a source of inspiration through the years !

Love those alpine animals! Thinking three sets - 1 for dd, 1 for dniece next birthday and 1 for dgodchild for Christmas....

Thank you!

And btw, yes, we have a playroom. My lovely owner is now almost 14, and he does still play with us chaps and doesn't want to part with any of us, but has now sadly got to the stage where he doesn't really want to acquire any more of us.

We will be moving house soon, to somewhere a bit smaller (SoMuchToBits and her h are splitting up), so it will be a challenge to find room for all of us, but I'm sure we'll manage it somehow!

And just to let you know, some of the sets he plays with most, even at this age are the police/fire rescue sets. I'm off for a nice now, see you later!

We just have a ferry, a couple of pirate ships, pirate island, some dinos and extra vehicles. It gets played with all together, ie the pirates raid the ferry and kidnap the poor bloke on the moped who then gets savaged by their pet dinosaur....

I long for some gentler themes like the holiday sets and houses.

My problem is storing the stuff. Where do you keep the big things? And how to store the tiny bits? Set by set or all together

We tend to keep them in "themes". So we will have a large plastic storage box for police stuff, another one for pirate stuff etc. With the exception of large items such as the aeroplane or buildings. Most of the buildings used to be left built on the floor of the playroom, but since my owner has got older and turned into a percussionist (and we needed room for a drum kit) we have had to dismantle some of the buildings and put the pieces in storage boxes. He is very swift at re-assembling them when he wants to use them though.

I think we need to review the type of storage we have in the playroom. We've got ikea trofast, the big buckets are great for cars, animals etc, but we need some shelving for board games and the expanding playmobil collection !

Spagbolagain the only bigger things we have are the Egyptian temple , the dragon tower and the pirate's dungeon. The dragon tower and huge black dragon and a bin of knights/romans with accessories are in my ds's wardrobe and rarely come out nowadays, the prison is on top of my dd's IKEA Kallax shelf (2x4 on its side) and the temple is in an IKEA Kusiner box (www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80172827/) in her Kallax along with Egyptian figures, animals and accessories.

The Egyptian stuff is the only theme sorted separately. Other than that it is all mixed up. We have a mixture of IKEA Kusiner boxes and clear plastic bins (like Really Useful Boxes), one for mixed figures and their capes/weapons/hats etc, one with all the animals, one with landscape pieces/trees/rocks etc and one with furniture/wagons/various accessories/small boats etc all mixed up. Also, a lot of the furniture moves in and out of dd's wooden dollhouse, which is on a low bench under which the various bins/boxes are stored.

(Oh, and there is a separate box with the play park along with contemporary figures and a car in dd's wardrobe, but this almost never comes out.)

It works quite well. Mostly dd builds a castle or house in the living room with Magnatiles/wooden blocks and then fetches the Playmobil bins she needs to build her scenarios around that.

no such thing as too much playmobil!
ever!