playmobile 'dolls house' or sylvanian families?

[HauntedLittleLunatic]

What do you think for 5yo Dd.

I am thinking playmobile would be more diverse as doesn't have to stick to dolls house but sylvanian perhaps more girlie and appealing to her cos of little animals.

Any pros and cons of either?

Is either better value for money (i know they are both expensive)?

They are both robust and good quality plastic and have lots of teeny pieces to contain. Sylvanian buildings come assembled unlike Playmobil. At 5 they usually will have a strong preference, can you subtly see which she prefers?

Playmobil is played with much more than sylvanian in our house.

Thanks for the opinions.

Have had a look at them in boxes and don't think she really 'gets' either. Looking for something that she can build and collect and add to over the years.

Playmobil comes with more furniture. I have made the mistake of buying the sylvanian hotel (when it was on offer) and am now trying to furnish it, the furniture is very expensive (even to buy 2nd hand on e-bay) and the famillies of animals cost £12-£20 a set . Playmobil is a nightmare to put together (if you get it deffently put it together before christmas day or you will spend all of christmas day trying to put it together).

The advantages of Playmobil are that you can expand the different themes more later if you want to (so not just house/furniture/people) and that Playmobil is very washable. But if your dd is more into cute animals she might prefer the Sylvanians.

We have playmobil, and I bought the SF gypsy caravan last year. Both are great - at the moment dd prefers SF, but that's because she played with playmobil pretty much every day for two years. I think playmobil is better overall - SF feels a bit of a rip-off because the furniture sets are so expensive and you can't break it up and rebuild, which is one of the great advantages of playmobil.

I find that my children never really 'get' Playmobil when they see it in boxes - it is their favourite toy to play with at home but they are never bothered about looking at it in the toyshop.

It has been a fantastic toy in our house whereas the Sylvanians we have (we have a caravan/car and a couple of families) are largely ignored.

I'd also say that it's better value for money as you can buy a set that comes complete with everything you need to play with it - rather than having to buy figures and furniture in addition.

we have playmobil, sylvanian and lego and they are now all used together rather than exclusively ifyswim

lego is used to build whatever takes their fancy to add to the other stuff. Also have an old wooden train set which gets chucked into the mix!
If you can, encourage them to use toys imaginatively together they will get the best of all worlds. However when they are young, their ideas can be quite fixed!

Just a word of warning though - all of these have small bits which are very easily mislaid/hoovered up! If you have any OCD tendencies your life will be plagued by sleepless nights looking for missing cabbages, bread roll, glasses, plates etc!

That said there are some good deals around at the moment - check out the moneysavingexpert.com and hotukdeals threads

Ds (6) has huge amounts of playmobil and has just discovered sylvanians having gone into toyshop with money to spend after his birthday. He has asked for Beechwood Hall for christmas and I have managed to order it from smyths with a free furniture set for £39.99 which is a good price.

He is mixing up the sets, the cats used the playmobil helicopter to get to their holiday destination in france the other day!

At the moment sylvanians are his favourite and are played with more. I do think this partly because they are new but I also think it is partly because they are intact. The problem with my ds is his obsession with taking things to pieces means that playmobil sets are usually in bits. It has got to the point now where I can't actually remember how to rebuild some of the buildings!

Both are good toys though and have equal amounts of fiddly bits.

I like Playmobil more - mainly because I love the 'engineering' in some of the sets.

To be fair though, we have boys and girls, and have quickly majored in pirates/knights adventure type playmobil - so maybe I'm not well placed to see the gentle charms of Sylvanians.

Ty for input. Think I have decided playmobil but going to wait until argos have it in the offer of the week or similar

may be worth calling playmobil and asking if they have any damaged box sale items reduced - I seem to remember getting an email/leaflet in the post when we were collecting playmobil. Sorry bit vague - think there was a thread on moneysavingexpert.com about it too.

HTH

john lewis have 20% of playmobil til 15th nov - i got ds the take along knights shield yesterday

Hmm....the grand maison which is what I would want is out of stock tho....

Playmobil lots of different themes, it all mixes and matches so we have houses, schools, hospitals, airports etc and people, vehicles and furniture move seamlessly between them.
Also DD, almost 11 will play with life like cars and figures, but might feel twee animals were a bit babyish.
The only SF figure we had lost it's nappy and got very grubby too!

HauntedLittleLunatic:
I'd give John Lewis a ring and ask if they have the grand maison in stock in any of their shops even though it is oos online. The online business is separate and the shops may have some stock, either locally or elsewhere in UK. If nothing local, they can find out if it is available in another shop and may be able to arrange for delivery to you.

Worth asking anyway! Also have you looked in ToysRus, Argos or The Entertainer? There are quite a few places doing discounts at the moment.

Good Luck!

I am expecting that one of the big stores will have it in their weekly offer sometime between now and Christmas...I know argos have their weekly deals. I just hope I haven't missed the playmobil week...