Kids Goodie bags

[RadoxRita]

AIBU to think most children’s party goodie bags are full of plastic crap that’s never played with and terrible for the environment?

I’d love to have other ideas for my kids parties this year. Any ideas MN?

Good ones we have received are:
Packet of seeds with children's gardening gloves
Baking kits
Games (those hosting joint parties have given bigger games like Dobble/Uno)
Books

When we have hosted, we've only ever given a consumable item and one time, we gave a voucher for return visit to the attraction party was held at with a slice of cake which was my favourite!

I did sweet cones for many years of parties. Usually took my kid to a cheap shop to choose the sweets. You can do wrapped sweets, you can do halal. Keep the cost down by picking some bulky ones like flumps/marshmallows. Really cost effective if its a cinema party!

They'd end up in the bin as we have an apartment with no garden in a town centre!

I use kidspartycraft and got paper bags , bee bombs , pencils and a wooden bat abd ball game . No plastic

The biggest hit in DD1's party bag were felt animal masks. I bought a bunch of them and all the kids were wearing them as they left and the leftover ones we kept are still worn now! Also did mini colouring books, some temp tattoos, stickers and some sweeties. Bag was paper.

Good job it's not your party bag then isn't it

Kids go nuts for plastic shit that breaks in 5 minutes. It sucks from an environmental perspective but there you go.

You don't say what age the kids are but for young kids there were some great suggestions on my thread about this from last month: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4857239-party-bags

We bought the cars recommended on that thread (metal diecast cars), they are reasonable quality (DS kept the leftover ones), and they fit with all his Hot Wheels stuff. The kids at this party were of an age where they get a lot out of a toy car.

We also went with cheap mini colouring books that had about 8 pages, I thought they would be handy for parents at restaurants etc (no crayons as I assumed everyone had their own decent non-toxic ones and probably wouldn't want one of those cheap 4 packs). They were 20 for £3.99 but one of the 20 packs only had 19 colouring books in it which annoyed me a little. They were made of recycled paper.

Lastly we put in some stickers from a multipack. Each child got a little sheet of 6 stickers.

The bags themselves were paper ones.

As we had 30 party guests I had to keep costs down to under £1 per bag.

The colouring books are sold out but these are the same for 10p more: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mini-Colouring-Books-Party-Filler/dp/B007RFNBKC/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=colouring+book+20+pack&qid=1693423097&sr=8-5

Best one I found was paint your own bird box, (while ago) they were £1.50 each then the cost of paints- party activity and gift in o e!

Shaped Post it notes and colourful but decent quality pencils went down well at my kid’s parties.

Hate them. I have enough plastic slinkies, slime men, rubbers, mini colouring books, crayons, plastic toys, trumpets, bouncy balls, tiny Yo-Yos, fidget toys, key chains, cardboard puzzles, face masks etc to last a life time.

we did Pokémon cards, and that went down well (although I also hate those), but then OH (who never empties the bags coming home) needed to add in key chains and bouncy balls and thought he was very original 🙄

parents at school love buying those hard lollies that are vegan, halal, kosher and what else (they usually get handed out to the whole year group), so had to bin a ton of those too (honestly, no one needs upwards of 40 hard lollies in a year).

I went to one of DS3's friend's parties where the mum gave out bags of sweets and said she'd "avoided loads of plastic", and another party in the same class where the mum gave out bags of plastic toys and no sweets, saying she'd "avoided loads of e-numbers".

Personally, I like to do sweets and plastic crap, so that I can piss off all the parents!

I've done books previously, but have tried to pick ones that would actually appeal to the DCs receiving them (eg geeky DD1's equally-geeky friends had a book about why is snot green and other interesting science-y facts last year amongst a few other small and consumable bits such as a smelly pencil and a few sweets). The bland and random The Works picture books we occasionally received when DCs were toddlers were definitely a waste of money. They were never good enough to be requested to be read a second time.
This year for both DCs, because it worked so well for the first DC, I gave each child a special cup (labelled with their name) for their drink during the party, then washed it up just before hometime and popped some sweets and biscuits into it to take away. A mixture of useful and consumable (one DC's set of glasses were plastic-free too), which was easy to stretch to because they've reached the age of parties with a very select and small group of friends.

My DCs do love the plastic tat TBH, but it actually causes a huge amount of upset when things inevitably break within 5 minutes. For that reason alone, before you even start on the environmental issues, I prefer bags which don't have it. Consumable and/or useful is my preference as the parent of the party-goer! Sweet cones are definitely an easy and popular option IMO - minimal plastic, nothing to immediately break, and bonus sweets for the parents to 'thin out' if they contain too much for your DC's age/stage/family rules (I definitely have never done this...! 😂).

We've had parties with simply cake in a napkin at the end. My DCs have always commented when this has happened, but have been fine when I've explained every family does things differently and we should never expect a party bag.

You'd definitely be looked down on for giving out a bag full of plastic by the mums round here, even though the kids like it. We've had books, consumables, wooden models and little lego sets (still plastic I guess but at least more useful).

I did re-usable personalised cold cups filled with sweets, still plastic but at least a bit useful and they were a hit with the children at my daughter's party. The vinyl name decals were cheap on eBay and I just stuck them on myself.

At toddler age, I quite like the plastic tat - DC is too little to notice if I hide it all and use it as surprise toys for 'busy bags' to use at family events or on long train journeys. He loves a shit plastic slinky. His best thing was a mini cuddly penguin though, he carried it around for weeks - you can get a multipack of that kind of thing for about 50p each and they feel more special.

How did that go down?

When my kids were at that stage 8n used to just shove sweets in a bag. It’s then up to parents to police their consumption