What toys does your 4-5 yr old ds play with?

[Gobbledispook]

Just asking because last night we had a new school friend over for tea. On the way from school to the car he was excited saying to ds 'what toys have you got, have you got Superman, have you got Spiderman?'.

We don't have any of these toys so I thought 'oh no!' - all was well and he didn't particularly look for them when he got here - they played really nicely with the stuff we do have (then not so nicely trashing the bedding upstairs! ho hum - there's a group of boys for you!!)

So anyway, I guess what I'm asking is, do most 4-5 yr old boys have these Spiderman toys etc? Ds1 is the eldest so he's not influenced by older children (yet!) so we are still on wooden railway, cars and garage, jigsaws etc. Tbh, we are out most of the time so they aren't sitting around playing with toys that much anyway.

So, what does your ds like to play with?

backpacks
Any action hero ... Spiderman /Power Rangers (gah)
Lego
Transformers
Jigsaws (of action heroes)
and
Sister

I am stunned that anyone who has already thrown a 4 year olds birthday party would not have this kind of crap given as presents

the only pressie I managed to totally put the kaibosh on was a bow and arrow set (WTF)

Think twiglett you missed out:

Whatever toy sister happens to be playing with at that particular moment.

Or is that just us? Agree with you about the type of stuff you get given for parties. DS got two action men, two spidermen, action men binoculars plus other stuff set etc.

I know Twiglett - we didn't get any Spiderman or anything for ds's 4th party and he had 24 guests so he did get a lot of stuff!! He got jigsaws, KidKnex (or whatever it's called), quite a few games, football, books, huge fire engine...anyway, no 'action hero' stuff.

Bump for evening peeps - still interested to know!

Hi, DS is 4.5, isn't at school yet, and by his own choice, doesn't watch TV except for videos (his favourites being ones with songs and dances on like Hi5 and a nursery rhyme vid), and doesn't seem interested in Spiderman etc. Despite owning a bedroom full of brightly coloured plastic stuff, his favourite toys are:
train tracks;
home-made paper Humpty Dumpty that falls off a wall;
blu-tak;
playdough;
the sofa cushions (for making train carriages);
3 Billy Goats Gruff puppets;
His duvet and pillow for acting out various scenarios involving Humpty Dumpty and/or Billy Goats
musical instruments
sellotape
string.

my ds will be 5 in december he is not into spiderman or powerangers, he still likes bob the builder,he likes books since he started school its hard to get him interested in anything all he talks about is school,the boy next door sometimes comes to play he is 6 they play in the bedroom they make a real mess & end up falling out after a while so i have to send him home.

Mine is 5.5 and loves all teh superheros, but is probably going past them all now. He was a powerrangers mad 3 and 4 year old, influence started at nursery and has continued into school. He is now Y1 and star wars is just being taken over by constant football playing leaving little time for anything else at play time or lunch time.

At home he plays a lot with lego, connex and playmobile. Mostly making something like an intricate castle scene and knights then acting out a battle or a story of some sort.

He is very much into drawing and labelling as well. Writing stories and drawing pictures about knights mainly, although sharks and whales feature a lot too!

He loves books too, mainly factual ones - animals, history and natural disasters (volcanos and earthquakes).

He hasn't played with his train track in ages. Doesn;t really do dressing up any more.

I think some children are just into imaginative play and superheroes make that accessible for them early on in that the respective roles are already set IYSWIM. As they get older he seems to have moved away from teh set piece characters and is much more into inventing his own and making up his own stories!

My little boy is growing up I think!

Geomag is magnetis construction stuff formed of balls and sticks - very expensive, but seems to provide endless hours of fun, and seems 'educationa' vis a vis magnetism etc

Yes - you can get Gameboy games which are age 3+. I oscillate between being annoyed that we bought him one and actually not minding (e.g. when we go on holiday - great for airport waits!)
Think the thing to do is have clear rules about when to use, and for how long. Oh, and hide it away every so often so they forget about it.

Gobbledispook - haven't read all the thread but in answer to your original post I can say SNAP. DS was 4 in July. Just started school. His toys are cars/garage, train set, lego, jigsaws, cuddly toys (not TV character ones except Bob The Builder vehicles that were past on by a friend), a couple of construction kits from Brio & Ikea, role play stuff (fireman/builder), workbench - I would say fairly typical & traditonal toys.

He recognises Spiderman because next door's 6 yr old has some Spiderman stuff but he hasn't got any himself and he doesn't have a clue about things like The Incredibles or Disney stuff ot thankfully any of the tie-ins you get at McDonalds (cos he's never been there).

ds1 was 5 in September he got a couple of Spidermen superheroes but not the nasty ones more friendly types, although he hasn't played much with them. I never let him watch violent TV and he has no power rangers.

His favourites are trains, cars (hot wheel sets and micro machines), marble run which he can construct better than me, lego, books especially ones about the world or animals. He also loves doing maze, wordsearch and spot the difference books. Playing on the CBeebies website but above everything else he adores football and would be happy to spend every day outside playing football with friends if he had the chance.

Ds2 is just 3 and plays with exactly the same stuff (apart from the puzzle books) his favourite being Thomas trains and marbles.

My DS was 4 in August and his fav are cars. He has hundreds and plays with them endlessly - builds car parks, traffic jams etc. He also likes his wooden train set - bought the basic Ikea one and have added to it. Loves Duplo - just moving onto the "proper" lego.

Went through a Scooby Doo stage but seems to have lost interest in that.

Mainly watches Nick Jr - loves the idea of Spiderman/Batman etc but not the reality! Is just getting into superheroes - influence from school and pals with older brothers.

Plays with DH's Playstation - have a timer so it's limited to 30 mins at a time. He was obsessed when we got it first but can go a week without playing with it now.

Yes we have Spidey, he's big in this family. but mainly ds2 just plays with lego, leap pad, building dens out of piles of non-descript toys.

I suppose in general most boys of this age would be into some kind of movie or TV programme character, I personally am very cynical about the marketing of these things, so haven't encouraged DS to like these things, and the way we have moved around, he hasn't picked it up from friends, either. I think a lot of parents do really push (unwittingly) some kind of tv character onto their kids, ("that's Micky Mouse!" That's Barbie! Is that Thomas? etc.) Plus I find the latest Star Wars, Batman or Spiderman movies (Toby Maguire) are still wholy unsuitable (too violent) for my DS (hope that doesn't wind any one up).

Thinking back to 1 year ago, DS was mostly still obsessed with ride-on cars, his scooter, his bike, making train track layouts, trains in general, toy lorries with cargo space, cars and trailers, sticks (sticks have always been big with my lot), airplanes.

You're quite right about the big budget movies: ds's watch the old Marvel style cartoons. No way that they'll watch the films yet.

I do put thought into whether they can have different action figures. Power Rangers are no-nos, far too violent. We have a few (given by others- I wouldn't buy them myself) Action Men, but there is no way any of his horrid enemies are coming into my house, in fact I don't think we have any nemesis figures.. oh no, a Dr Ock, but only coz he's half of a walkie talkie set my Mum gave last Christmas.

On the few occasions ds's have done the 'I'm Spidey and I'm gonna get you' bit, we have taken them aside and explained that actually, Spidey is a jolly nice chap who only gets angry with people who hurt others, and that he's more like a policeman than a fighter.

Course, all the Welsh policemen have webs and lycra suits

Ds is 4 and a half. Only watches CBeebies, but knows who Spiderman is (don't ask me how!). He plays with his wooden railway mostly, and also does role play with his soft toys (mostly acting out Wallace and Gromit atm). Also a few playmobil things, and he likes dd's Happy Land. That's it really.

All very encouraging - we aren't so odd!!

I think some of my friends enforce the superhero thing too. They buy them all the t-shirts with the characters on - bleurgh (just my opinion!). I don't think they've seen the films or anything.

Anyway, I've just been and bought playmobil for the ds's for Xmas.

Cars, cars, cars. Thomas the Tank Engine train set. Rides on bikes and scooters. Books. Puzzles. Painting, drawing and craft sets.

But most of all anything with wheels.

DS3 has a fleece with Spidey on, but only coz it was £3 in the sale and is lovley and warm

I agree about the logo'd clothes generally... with three kids we pass a lot down anyway, this sort of logo makes that obvious IYSWIM

DS went through a real thing about talking about Spiderman although he hasn't seen the film, because I agree it is too violent. We have let him watch the old Star Wars films but not the new ones because they are more violent. I was looking at the DVDs the other day and all 3 of the old star Wars are U but Toy Story (which I always classified as fairly harmless) is PG.

We were really shocked when we went to a friend's house and their DS had boxing gloves! Surely they aren't appropriate until kids have some idea of how to use them (ie you don't just bash other kids whilst wearing them, as their little darling did).

Arabica my ds has boxing gloves but he wouldn't think to hit someone with them on! They're for use with the little punchbag in his room! My dh boxes and sees it as a fitness thing. I don't think ds even knows what real boxing is or that it involves hitting another person.

My ds is 5.5 and is in year one. I have found that it doesn't matter what toys they have at home, they get into the superhero thing when they are in the playground. My ds regularly plays power rangers (which he has never seen) with his friends, ditto spiderman, batman and ninja turtles - never seen any of them on the tv.

He HAS just seen the first three star wars films (ie the old ones)and loves them with a passion - we have some of the star wars lego, plus some of the spiderman stuff. There was a lot of star wars play in the playground when the latest film came out and the cereal packets had mini light sabers in them - again DS had no idea at the time what star wars was but it didn't stop him joining in. Now even dd (just 3)can sing the Darth vader music from the films.

DS has definitely grown out of cars and DD plays with the brio trainset more than he does. he likes his transformers and bionicles. He does have a thunderbird 2 and that's very popular.A new thing is computer games - he plays on the lego website games on my computer (we haven't bought any). Still likes his playmobil too (mostly emergency vehicles of various types). But he does an awful lot of imaginary play with his sister, lots of building dens, rescuing each other and pretending to be different animals and characters - that's probably what they both spend most time doing at the moment.

Ds1 will be 5 in Jan and so far still plays mostly with his train set and various fisher price toys from my childhood. However, he's starting to talk about Thunderbirds, which we have not watched at home but is clearly a topic of conversation in the playground. Quite happy to get him the odd toy of that type and probably will for Xmas. He has a Spiderman outfit which he loves (wearing it right now) but he equally loves his Peter Pan outfit, no sense that Spidey is cooler or anything like that. Some of his friends with older brothers are much more switched on about what's available at Toys R Us and I imagine that ds2 will be more like that when he reaches 4/5.

I love the fact that Thunderbirds is coming back in, it's the first/only Character type thing DS is realy into and I don't have a problem with it at all.

I would let him watch the first ("Episode 4") Star Wars movie, but you know what? You can't buy it on its own on dvd!

I have just bought him some BeyBlade PJS, but not because he knows anything about BeyBlade, he just likes that Japanese Anime look.