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.

Apart from electronics,

I ordered some bits off eBay so my son could make his own den. Camouflage netting, tent pegs, ground sheet, etc. Aldi are selling den kits this week so may buy one of them to top up the kit as it's looking a bit tired.

Trampoline
Hot wheels cars
Soft play for my youngest
I bought a wooden bbq from Lidl that my toddler loves.
I've bought random Lego bundles off eBay. My son prefers to create things himself than follow a guide to build a car/etc.

Best

• Lego
• Duplo (I'm desperate to get rid of it but 8 and 5 year old still build with it- they like the scale)
• Brio
• Large white cardboard rocket for them to paint (hours of fun painting and decorating it, then they played in it until it fell apart)

Worst

• Toy cars
• The Paw patrol helicopter that DS1 bought with his birthday money and broke within 20 minutes
• Wooden dolls house and wooden space ship- just weren't interested
• Branded toys (Paw patrol, power rangers etc) they just don't hold their interest (Lego is the exception here).

Great:
Door bouncer
Bouncy chair
Uno card game
Cheat card game
Trampoline
Tea sets, plastic or teensy china one
Stomp rockets
Glue Gun/3d printer pen
Kites
Water colouring books
Colouring by numbers
Felt tips
Lego
Brio
Occulus rift (yes expensive but used constantly and a godsend in lockdown with two teens)
Marbles
Matchbox cars
Little Tykes Car
Scooters
Bikes

Crap:

Bumble - sit on toy. Rarely used and cat loved scratching the foam cover.
Hotwheels - fun but a bastard to assemble
Scalextric - brushes on cars just die and cars fling off track too easily
Anything related to a TV show and advertised at Christmas, I'm looking at you 30 quids worth of Fireman Sam tat ( although the FS vehicles were good)
Pedal car of the old fashioned kind - quaint but too heavy for toddler legs to drive and needed more space than we had. The have an insanely large turning circle and we live in a terrace.
Skateboards - not as easy as it looks so a few uses and grazed elbows and that was that.
Those big science experiment/practical joke sets. A million pieces and most of contents quite boring
Overpriced magic sets including the one beloved of hamleys. One decent trick, a few too complicated for a child's hands and a pack of boring cards.
Build your own robot/anything fiddly and assembleable - results underwhelming for box hype. My sons preferred a five quid airfix.

Also Trunkies were good value actually when they were little and we could go on planes.

We've got a lot of value from Lego, but only after DS turned 6 about 6 months ago. Before that it was too fiddly for him. He doesn't always make the sets, just builds random things from a pile of bricks.

Duplo and the wooden train set have also been very popular. I think we've had the train set for about 5 years, and added bits at birthdays and Christmas, so we have quite a bit now, and it's used regularly.

They also like magnetic shapes (Magformers) and the marble run (though that kind of needs an adult to help build it).

They spend hours doing craft and drawing etc.

It all depends what your kids are into. We find that having too many toys makes them lose interest in all of them. When it's cut down to fewer toys and kept reasonably tidy, they play a lot more.

Facebook Marketplace is really good for trying things out. We've bought quite a few bits and pieces on there, for very little. If they don't use it, we sell it on.

Best value

Sylvanians
Duplo
Happpyland
Tea set
Cosy coupe car

Least

• A toddler rocking horse. It’s lovely to look at but gets bugger all use
• puppets *aquabeads

Best value: we have several sets of really nice wooden blocks. There were expensive but get played with by one or both DC most days. Also cheap nasty Power Rnager toys they got from a Father Christmas visit 2 years ago that we thought would break immediately but have ended up being some of their most played with toys.
Worst value: Doll's house, Wobbel board