To ask why there is no must have toy?

[Swinesinsleepingbags]

It seems like there is not a must have toy, nothing that kids are dreaming of and hoping they have been good enough to get. Is this the end of the commercialisation of Christmas or have kids given up on toys for tech?

I looked at the top 12 must have Christmas gifts yesterday and I don't know anyone that has bought more than one from that list.

I think will less adverts kids are less swayed by what their friends want and go more for things that they like the look of. It certainly seems that way in my daughter's friendship group. Yes she wants Lol's but I'm happy to buy them as she plays with the ones she has every single day and has done since she got her first 2.5 years ago. Not keen on the plastic waste but we recycle the hard plastic at our local tip. Hopefully her sister will play with them when she is older too! Her other main 'wants' are all books.

The fire salamander from Frozen 2

My daughter wants a tamagotchi after watching something about 80’s toys a few months ago 😂.

Definitely agree that there is less advertising in some ways - CBeebies etc don't have adverts at all, or you often have the ability to skip. When I was growing up kids TV was only on two channels and for a limited time each day, so we were probably all watching the same ads.

DD3 wants a "singing mermaid". Father Christmas is bringing a mermaid but she'll have to provide the vocals!

Do you think it's to do with people watching more streamed/catch up TV and less live, so there are less adverts?

I remember as a child being bombarded with adverts for toys but now we pretty much only watch catch up or streamed TV and adverts are short and mostly skipable so not getting as much of my or my child's attention!

This thread is really interesting. I used to work in marketing to kids years ago and we'd all have to trek to the excel centre in Jan to display our wares to the chain store buyers for the coming Xmas. We'd then spend a fortune on TV ads and in store displays from Oct to Nov and pray our product made it into the 'top ten must have' toy lists. Now my kids barely see an ad, which in any case are now really heavily regulated l, and the top ten lists are so random I ended up taking them both to smyths toys a couple of months ago to try and get an inkling. I've bought dc8 a sketcher drawing thing which was stupidly expensive but I was just happy it wasn't a screen and will encourage drawing. Dc4 got a tickle me elmo and the rest is books, slime, and remote control cars.