AIBU to think that the plastic toys that come with preschool magazines are actually quite brilliant?

[bsquared]

I know that some supermarkets (Waitrose - www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-56456170) are pledging to stop stocking children’s magazines with plastic toys, and I just feel that is such a shame. They are reasonably affordable, thoughtfully developed and encouraging of independent play.

My DS (4) opened a CBeebies magazine today that contained two brilliant toys - some balancing scales and a clock face. The balancing scales had numbers which were weighted - he started by playing with ‘greater than / less than’ - 9 tipped the balance more than 3 and so on, and then started setting multiple numbers on each side before questioning what the ‘equals’ sign was and starting to balance small sums of numbers on each side e.g. 5 = 3+2. What a brilliant resource! And not disposable at all - I will hang onto it, as I have done with the Paw Patrol walkie talkies and Peppa Pig teaset etc - all from this same type of magazine.

So, YANBU - the toys that come with preschool magazines are actually really good

YABU - supermarkets are right to stop selling them

That's one magazine. However most of them are not educational, and are just full of cheaply made plastic crap which is forgotten about quickly. The actual educational value of most of the plastic crap is nil- and if you really wanted it, you could always set up a subscription. Most parents buy it juts because it's there- same as the sweets at the counter.

My ds loved the number blocks toys that came with the CBeebies magazines. So there are some good ones admittedly but no most of them are rubbish that we could definitely cut down on. It's not exclusive to magazines though, children get through so much plastic crap don't they?

I find the toys with ceebies magazine generally to be poor quality and they break very quickly. DD1 loves them but banning them is probably the right thing for the environment

My 4yo gs loves the number blocks that came with the CBeebies magazine. He plays with them for hours and his maths is coming on in leaps and bounds.
Unfortunately everything else that comes with these magazines is usually rubbish tat so we don’t buy them.

We have kept lots of the teeny toys from
Various pet magazines. But sadly
All the stuff from Mega and toxic magazine ends up in the bin. It’s just the same old crappy weapons every issue!

I do find it weird though how some plastic has to be banned while other plastic just gets ignored. I’m sure there is a lot
More plastic thrown away from waitrose mushroom packaging alone than there is from the magazines sold in store.

The question is how many end up in the bin after 2 weeks... 4 weeks ... 6 months.

When mine were little I found the CBeebies magazine was one of the better ones. Agree with you that we had a few toys that latest ages and gave much enjoyment. But many of the magazines/toys are rubbish. The endless plastic tat Frozen bracelets and necklaces that broke as soon as they were taken off the magazine etc.
So I’d have to say YABU.

My kids have been playing with their magazine toys for more than four years, my eldest has only really just grown out of them just like any other plastic toy. We have a special box for them and they really love them and a few burger king toys too. I don't think the plastic waste is any worse than other plastic waste that adults consume like packaging and take out drink cups. I know quite a few kids that treat them the same as their other toys and the number locks are a hit with everyone

I find the toys from the baby shark magazine to be really good quality and I love seeing what they are going to do with the next magazine.

Most other magazines have really poor quality thin plastic toys which break when you just look at them.

I'd much prefer it if magazines gave 1 good quality toy rather that loads of crap ones that are repeated every year.

It's interesting that the pretentious kid who wanted to get rid of them was past the age of enjoying them. Talk about pulling up the drawbridge.

When mine were that age the plastic tat was the most used part of the magazine

My DC make incredibly good use of most of the toys they get with magazines and happy meal toys things like that. Of course some of it gets damaged or broken and then it gets thrown away, but that's true of wooden toys and fabric toys and really expensive things they get for birthdays/Xmas including consoles and the like. Nothing is made to last these days.

Oh no, they are awful.The only magazine I seem to be able to find without it is the Beano. What happened to all the other comics of yesteryear like that?.why does plastic have to be on everything?
The example you gave may well have been a good educational toy, but it would be much better sold as a toy in its own right. Then parents would have a choice whether to buy it or not and we would stop all these mass produced, plastic freebies that most people don't want. If you subscribe to such a magazine I can't imagine wanting this crap on a regular basis.

My daughter is almost 13 and we still have some of the toys that came with cbeebies or Fun to Learn comics bought a decade ago.
There are some terrible comics published these days. Ones that have barely any content. I actually get more annoyed by the quality of the actual comic than the toy that comes with it. I soon learned which comics are actually decent ones and only would buy those for my daughter which was pretty much the cbeebies ones, Fun to Learn ones and Sparkle World when she was little.
If people didn't buy the crap comics then they would stop being produced. But people buy them. Perhaps rather than 'banning' these comics people should actually be more aware of what they are buying.

Agree that CBeebies seems to have better toys. When Waffle first started showing there weren’t any toys you could buy, but the magazine had a set with a little dog toy and bed etc. My DS absolutely loves the thing and has played with it more than some of his Lego sets etc. They know how to make appealing toys. There’s a CBeebies art magazine that does some good craft gifts, stickers and stuff that’s a good alternative to plastic.

Unfortunately a lot of them are shit. Peppa Pig magazine is certainly guilty of providing absolute tat that breaks as soon as a toddler gets their hands on it. And I hate the magazines with tubs of slime and crap that will get binned within days.

Plastic tat. Most will get binned after a few weeks. They're terrible for the environment.

It's hit and miss. We too have the scales and the number blocks (lots of the bloody things) and the AlphaBlocks letters , the recent Bing park set won us first prize in the Easter bonnet parade etc. Some gets kept and some is cheap rat that isn't of interest. If we can't charity shop it (so unwanted rather than just shit) then it goes in the bin of course. Bit like Macdonald's. We have a whole bag of minion toys for example that will be used until they break (and they're pretty robust! / Kids grow out of them and they're donated but we've also had random stuff that just doesn't last or isn't very playable.

But agree with pp, kids toys are an easy target. Better to hit kids toys that don't affect adults that tackle packaging waste etc that might make adults lives a little harder

I was v pleased to see that not a single Easter egg had plastic in it

I find the stickers and craft stuff more wasteful because the stickers can't really be recycled and stop the paper it is stuck to being recycling as they contain plastic. Then the craft stuff eventually deteriorates and you end up with a big pile of used crafty bits that you hope might be used one day. At least the you can be used over and over

Sometimes the toys on the front of the magazines are ok, but IME the majority of them are cheap and flimsy bits of tat.

When kids stop reading the cbeebies comic,and start reading Toxic or some football comic, you will see what kind of tar is attached. These magazines were full of it.

The cbeebies one does often have some decent enough stuff with it. My youngest loved the cbeebies craft magazine which I felt gave longer lasting enjoyment as there were loads of things to make from it. Some of the Christmas crafts are still stored away as precious ornaments in our house .

I do think the comics are expensive though for what you actually get. Id rather have no tat but it be a bit cheaper.

YABU, there is enough plastic crap in the world already.

I buy the CBeebies mag for DD and think there's a mix of OK, played with and "Straight to the bin" - so a cash register, toaster (??) and blender were the epitome of plastic rubbish, but velcro fruit/veg with a little knife a few months back was great. She's also been given a Frozen mag which seems to have decent pencils and pens with it.

I tend to buy ones with the toys once in a while rather than each time, but if they bring her pleasure and don't seem like total junk I allow it. She also has a Happy Meal soft toy narwhal that she loves.

FWIW you can buy the mags without the toys online if you like.

My DS got a magazine this weekend that had a plastic swing, roundabout and slide in it and foam cut outs of bing. He loved it but the swing was broken from the minute it came out of the plastic. The slide doesn't stand up and the characters don't fit on it. As I put it into the bin yesterday I was reminded of what I'd heard about shops banning them and I thought well no wonder! What a waste.

We love the Thomas magazine which has little Thomas trains in. So far my little one has only had 2 of them and has 5 trains - 3 of which we used on his birthday cake and are still being played with now (his birthday was the start of November) and the other two which have been carted around with him regardless of where we have been going for the last month or so. He puts them all into a special “Thomas box” which he has designated and chooses that to play with more than anything else!