What not to waste your money on for the DC this Christmas-

[Sparklingbrook]

I will start, get the DCs wish lists ready to cross them off-

Elefun. Should be renamed Ele IMO.

Golden Coin Maker. Just don't.

Any more suggestions?

This thread is a good idea but I must remember to log out before nosy starting to question Father Christmas 9 year old gets on the laptop . I agree that the coin maker and various expensive cruddy plastic games are a waste of space/£ - the best things my DS have had are Lego, Playmobil and figures that they play with all the time and still sneak into bed. They love their DS's and Wii but these also make them evil as per a previous poster's DC...

I've got some Hama for my DCs this Xmas - normal for DD and 'maxi' for 3yo DS. One of the many things I never had but really wanted as a child and am therefore forcing on my unsuspecting children :o

I've heard aqua beads, that were seemingly invented to avoid the hardship of a ten second ironing session, are the devil incarnate, and go hideously sloppy when you squirt the water at them.

Thankfully my DCs are not taking enough notice of adverts to really beg for anything like that yet!

"don't wake dad" game and pig goes pop, both crap

Vsmile motion.... Rubbish! Uninteresting stupid graffics and rediculus price.
Ino tab and its rival equivalent- I just baught two cheap tablet computers and downloaded a bunch of free kiddie stuff from the android market insted and it cost me A LOT less.
This penguin game... Bunch of tiny penguins, round turny thing...? It was stupid and after taking all penguins out of the box the kids had left to play with other things.
Teddys.... especially the dress up ones.

Lego, any kind, any amount. It's stupid, I hate it, my Hoover hates it, the arches of my feet hate it! It's irritating unless you have a child who is obsessive about keeping it all together, otherwise, its crap crap crap.... !

Elefun....wait five minutes for a butterfly to appear!

That chocolate lollymaker is such a pile of tat.

Kidiminiz. Aaaargh they are complete rubbish - got two last year. Lasted Christmas Day and been in toybox since.

Best presents for 6 year old in last year have been Littlest Pet Shop. The treehouse is really sturdy and has loads of little places to put the animals. I get the old versions from home Bargains!

She is desperate for a blue Furby but there are none anywhere so hoping she will change her mind by Christmas!

So the companies that make these toys that just don't work (like Hot Wheels, we tried and tried and the cars just won't loop the loop, or the garage DD had that collapsed into its component parts every time she tried to play with it) - do they actually test them out? Do they just not care?

And what's with the craft kits where it's impossible to make the item so that it looks as good as the picture on the front, because the paints are like glue and the brush is made of total tat?

Brio train track (and other compatible brands) - fantastic. Lasts for years, and does what it says on the tin.

Plastic fruit and veg in a plastic basket - must have cost a fiver or so and came out every day for years.

Hama beads - obviously some aren't fans but my kids loved them.

Any of the Fireman Sam toys. They are flimsy, crap and extremely poor quality.

Transformers....who designed them?

yes they fold out into a robot WOW...but they never bloody fold into the car again

I even laminated the instructions to keep them readable as I needed them for the 12 hour marathon that follows the first unfolding

I twisted and turned and clicked and pushed so much, my mind works like a half folded transformer....ARGGHHHHHHHHHH

Anything that claims to produce 'real' food. I've never known any of them produce anything vaguely edible. Worst was the Ready, Steady Cook ice cream maker - I bought not one but two of their rubbish ice cream makers (one inflicted on friend's child ). It didn't produce ice cream as was only a container to prefreeze which made the milk slightly chilled.

I don't get the Furbie thing. They were shit 15years ago when I was at school. What's so good about them now?! N they were never £50-60 back then

Lego kits - we bought Lego Harry Potter kits for the dses for Christmas some years ago, and it was only the timely intervention of dmum bearing alcohol that stopped me from losing my mind altogether.

And once you have finally managed to put the kit together, you don't want the children to play with it, for fear that it will get dismantled and you will have to go through the hell of building it again.

Hama beads are indeed great for girls play dates, even if you end up finishing the creations after they have gone.

Gluing them to card or ironing on *laminating pouch strengthens them to survive going into school and being handed out.

• iron beads, open out laminating pouch, place glue side down and iron with paper like the beads at the same temp. If you do both sides it makes really robust coasters.

Meant to add aqua beads are useless.
If you are very very very careful they stick together very well, but two drops too much water and the colours run.

They roll everywhere, way more irritating than Hama beads.

But the main draw back is cost, you can get huge buckets of Hama beads, bags of the colour you've run out of and multiple packs of boards. DCs can happily let friends take their creations home and I don't stress if a few meet the hoover.

Aqua beads come only in twee packs at great expense.

Dc got given the playmobil pyramid last year and have had lots of fun with it - although very little authentic egyptian only adventures! Dh has a collection of asterix characters he has lovingly built up over the years from trips to France and they have been hijacked for adventures in it (both dc love the asterix films which includes asterix and cleopatra) as well as all their other playmobil etc characters.

Not sure I'd pay the full price for it (£80 last year) but I managed to get it for about £34 which was reasonable - and a great price for it last year, seem it at that price already this year so you might get it cheaper with discounts etc)

There's also a great scooby doo film involving pyramids which you should be able to get for about £3-5 which might be worth getting if you do get it, if your dc don't particularly know about Egyptians - gives them a bit of context and see how they can have all sits of adventures with it.

And another vote to say all the hot wheels track things are pretty crap and to be avoided. Especially any that involve having water in (eg to change car colour) - because it will just go everywhere and cause extra mess.

Flitter Fairies and elefun

We brought Alphabet Pal for DD about 7 years ago. The thing was so annoying it's crappy voice and ooh that ticklesevery time dd accidentally put sounds together that could be a swear word. Unfortunately DD loved it. It did eventually make it's way to the charity shop

Moshi Monsters treehouse - £19 for a plastic tree that does absolutely nothing, is unbelievably fiddly to assemble, and breaks easily.

MoonDough. Never had the sand stuff but the dough was nothing like dough at ALL. More like dust. Coloured dust that permanantly marked my already heavily marked imaculate sofa when DD took the bag out the box and the fucking bag split!

Barbie puppy water park. DD played with it once and it made an almighty mess. water everywhere! It is now languishing in the garden as a paddling pool toy for when it's sunny. We dont have many sunny days here in the North West. Ahh well.

Bounce and Go zebra thingy. I'm sure other little ones like it but DD didnt think much of it. And once it's assembled I found it wasn't that easy to just take apart and put away easily so if you dont have much room for it and your child does like it, storing it is a bugger.

Furbies. Or at least the ones around the first time. My younger sister got one and it used to start being a noisy bastard at awkward times. like 3am. and it continued being noisy for ages and ages. The only thing that shut it up was my dad hammering it to death. By the time he did that sis was so pissed off with it she didn't even mourn it. Mind you, it was quite robust, because before battering it with the hammer dad dropped it from a first floor window and still carried on jabbering. The don't make toys like that anymore....

Slinkies. My sister and I had one each. They did NOT walk down stairs. they teetered, collapsed and fell to the bottom in a tangled heap.

Oh and almost any TV character toy is total shite and very overpriced. DD's Peppa Pig bath toy hasbare patches where the paint has rubbed off. And my niece's Mickey Mouse rocket is just total shite. Had an Iggle Piggle toy for age 18 months and up and my very robust DD was struggling to carry it around still at aged 4. It was that heavy.

Awful, useless toys...
V tech smile, leap pad, most games I have ever bought (including things like cadoo) transformers, nerf guns, that big lorry thing from cars...never went together properly and fell apart if you even looked at it.
Great toys...ikea wooden kitchen, kitchen accessories, wooden food, wooden building blocks (the John Lewis ones are fab and ds2 has played with his every day since last Xmas), playmobil- farm and pirates are firm favourites here, wii and ps3, bikes, playdoh (again, gets played with everyday) and take and play Thomas railway sets. Ds2 has lots of the sets and engines and track. The wooden ones are great too. I have got him 2 rare engines from e bay this year for 99p each! :)
And ds1 is very fond of his iPad!

I have mixed feelings about Hama beads. Yes, they do keep children quiet, even my boys who don't usually do quiet. However, they do get everywhere. And boys tend to half-make something which we then have to tiptoe around for weeks in case anyone jogs the board and all the beads jump off.

Barrie dolls are total crap. The only people able to dress them, change shoes, bend them to put them on their pony is anyone over 17 years old. WTF!

BARBIE even!

Still have nightmares about Moonsand.

Ben and Holly playsets are the worst tat around, you can't fart near one without it breaking let alone letting your kids play with it.

My mum bought DS a Transformer in july for his birthday, very expensive and a pile of shite. You need an enginering degree to work out how to convert it to a car.....to this day it has only ever been in robot form. How they think a 6 year old could do it alone is anyones guess