Most cost effective toys in your home

[kavalkada]

Posting here for traffic.

Last week I got a big delivery box and my kids (six year old and two year old) spent all week playing with empty box and with the help of pillows and blankets made a castle. Their room is full of toys they almost never play with, some of them very expensive and I had to save a lot to give them (hot wheels garage, I'm looking at you). So, what are the toys you do not regret having and what are those you could throw away in a minute and nobody would notice.

Most effective in our home:

1. board games (yesterday we played three games of ticket to ride, happy, happy mum)
2. bicycle
3. ball
4. paper, coloring books and crayons (my two year old loves them)
5. soft toys (for sleeping at night)
6. hidden pictures magazine
7. books
8. tablet (although I should have probably put that damn thing on the first place)

Least effective:

1. Hot wheels everything
2. LEGO - my son hates it, and we'll see if my daughter will be interested
3. puzzles - my son will do one only one if I ask him, but I like them, so...
4. dolls
5. hundreds pf plastic toys that are forgotten the moment we open them
6. NERF everything
7. arts and crafts

and everything else in our room.

Most effective:
Tuff tray (for sensory play or most often just water)
Plastic realistic animals
Drawing materials

Least effective:
Soft toys
Lego
Baby doll

Most effective
Dolls
Dolls House
Sylvanian Families
Lego (gets played with to make furniture for the above)

Least effective
Dress up clothes (she won't even use them for school dress up days)
Paw Patrol Stuff
Play tent

My 4 month old spurns all of his expensive rattles and sensory blocks. The two things he loves most are a foil emergency blanket which cost £3 on Amazon, and an egg box with two holes cut in it though which he can pull a ribbon.

DS 8

Most played with
Lego
Brio (until he was 6, now occasionally)
Books
Hot wheels
Wooden blocks

Least
Playmobil
Soft toys
Board games

We have got good value from board games, lego and a train track with motorized trains.
Poor value - dolls, sylvanians, craft sets.

Hits:

Playmobil
Art stuff
Lego and duplo
Barbies
Baby dolls
Jigsaws
Wobbel board
Train set
Wooden playsets- castle, circus,farm
Dressing up clothes

Misses

Plastic tat
Stuffed toys
Puppets

We shove stuff in the loft and rotate a bit. To be honest they play with pretty much everything. Anything that is ignored gets put away and if they don't ask about it then it gets put to charity.

Best
Minnie Mouse car
Wooden kitchen
Wooden tea set
Dress up box

Worst
Literally everything else in the living room, playroom, their bedrooms and the giant bloody toy box

Best:
Minecraft ( ds 8, dd11, ds13 all play this and have done for years. Not sure there's anything else that can span their age and genders like that, except....)

The trampoline ( fantastic investment, we've had three over 7 years and it's still a winner)

Trains ( Thomas and brio were a constant for ages up to 6).

Play doh and kinetic sand

Nice wooden play food

As a grandparent we have acquired lots of toys over the years and the ones we have kept have been the ones our kids liked and now the GC.
Ones worth keeping have been
the Duplo train set
playmobil camper van
Home made dolls house
Homemade wooden ramp to roll cars down
little wheelbarrow and watering can
fishing nets to catch tadpoles
lots of books
For the younger GC we have a box with
bubble mixture
play dough
crayons, chalks, paper, paint, brushes etc

Have given away - boxes of lego.

Trucks animals Diplo magnetic tiles toy food, and absolutely everything that has small parts so can be tipped into an amorphous pile and scattered around the house in interests of some game, usually cooking. I kid you not, this happens every day. Eg Empty the kitchen utensil jar, find something like a toddler clock and empty all the numbers out and serve them up as sweets. Or the stacking cups. Or the mini animals. Add some blocks in. Wrap it in a scarf or 10.

Lego, but we have crates of the 'old' stuff and plenty of boards. Key is to leave it up so DC's can develop it over time. Nothing more frustrating as breaking it up to start back at ground zero tomorrow.

Brio train set, as above.

K-nex and HappyLands...was it called a play set from ELC

A dressing up box...cheap plastic crate, charity and old clothing, accessories ( scarves, glasses, hats etc). A den building kit, crate, old sheets, cam netting, pegs, poles, clothes horse. A box of old pans, spoons, bowls for the garden. All put together from mainly unwanted stuff and when I was struggling to afford toys as a single parent

Best

• duplo / duplo train set
• magformers
• football
• scooter
• kids uno
• watercolour paints
• yoto player

Worst

• anything wooden & Melissa & Doug type
• soft toys

I just found a person and an octopus puzzle piece in my shoe. Must have been acting as a novelty plate yesterday.

Have to agree that worst is the soft toys, teddy bears. Apart from being such dust magnets they serve zero purpose. My ds and dd just don't even give them a look.

This thread just proves that all children are different which is how it should be

DS is only 16 months so the below might change, but based on the last 6 months or so -

Best value: One particular cuddly toy which he's attached to (a little Jellycat puppy)
Cardboard stacking blocks
Wooden board made by grandad for Christmas which has various doorknobs, latches, bell from a child's bike etc attached to it
Simple toy cars
Board books

Worst: Pikler triangle. I was thinking about buying one and they are hundreds of pounds. Very luckily, the same grandad made him one instead. He's not interested at all and he does like climbing frames at the park, and climbing on furniture and stairs
Anything plastic that lights up or makes an electronic type noise. DS is actively frightened of most of these but he does like books that have a bit you can press to make a noise

My DS loved his brio train track and esp the battery driven train which must have been a Thomas the tank engine. He loved Lego and puzzles. And I wanted to get a discontinued Fisher Price castle which I eventually found at a car boot sale with all the figures and the cannon. He loved his ELC space ship. Puzzles and Lego. Nintendo DS. He didn't like the ELC wooden castle. Hated arts and crafts.

DD loved her Disney kitchen with hobs that made cooking noises. Loved her sylvanians for a long time. Hated her Nintendo DS. Loved arts and crafts. Loved baking cakes. Loved her ELC happyland stuff and wooden dolls house with a gazillion little items. Loved her doll, cot and pushchair when very young.

Their choice of toys were very stereotypical of their gender but DS age 2 loved pushing a dolls pushchair he was given with his teddies in.

They both liked building dens and played for ages in a huge cardboard box we turned into a space ship.

They are now teens - DS into PS4 and DD loving her makeup and TikTok- they now take themselves to the park, town etc

Teen DD still likes minecraft where she can indulge her inner interior design alter ego and spends a lot of time on her phone chatting to friends

Depends on age. A couple of years ago Id have agreed with nerf.

Now, aged 7 and 9, they play with them daily.

Brio was well worth it.
As was duplo (still played with by both)
Lego - not yet that interested. Im waiting til the youngest is older before packing it away (most of it is from when DH and I were children)
Toy kitchen - has been a hit for 7 years and counting
Playmobil- DS2 adores it. DS1 has never liked it

Bikes, scooters and skateboards are brilliant value

You also need to be careful not to buy and then get rid of, toys too early.

My nephew gets loads of toys that he's a bit too young for, never uses, then they get given away before he's really old enough.

We've bought toys too early. They hang around for a couple of years gathering dust the suddenly are popular.

Cardboard boxes and my 13 year old STILL used them
Paper
Grandmas
Sock puppets
Sticks

All those little collectables - Moshi Monsters, Shopkins, little animal rubbers etc were played with all the time.

Oh yes moshi monsters my DS loved those and the books and the online stuff. He also liked an online thing called penguin something or other.
DS also collected pokemon cards. Liked those hex bug things.

Most

Lego/Duplo - played with everyday
Happy land - but only DS2. DS1 was never interested
Board games
Top trumps
Trains

Least

Hot wheels - the cars are played with, but the trick stuff is short lived
Sylvanian families - that was me, imposing my own preferences. They were having none of it

In our house it's
LEGO- ours is all mixed up. Sets don't stay together so they are creative with it.
Any arts and crafts items
The Tuff tray
Toy kitchen
Swings and slide set
Trampoline
Tractors and dump trucks

Least effective
Sylvianian families
Dolls/barbies