Went to Toys R Us yesterday.........

[sweetheart]

Ds (8) has his birthday early Dec and Xmas coming up so we took him to Toys R Us yesterday to have a look round and see if anything stood out - NOTHING! Not a single bloomin thing looked worth buying

I have no idea what we are going to get him this year and I am loathed to waste money on crap that won't be used.

Can anyone give me any inspiration?

With my ds and friends - skylanders is sooo last year this year each birthday boy has got the disney infinity (like skylanders but disney characters instead) I was surprised I thought it looked young but no all 8 and 9 year olds here are wanting that and loving it.

my Ds is 8 on the 1st Jan and it is so difficult. he has asked for skylanders giants and characters aswell as a tablet. also angry birds star wars jenga. but that is about it. skylanders seems a good bet because of all the characters u can buy.

I like the sound of this Disney infinity thing - he loves all the Disney / Pixar films so I might have to mention that to him and see if the coolness has reached our small town yet

Screams - that seems like a very sensible recommendation, thanks I will give that a try.

Actually sorry to be so dense but can someone explain skylanders to me? I brough my nephew a skylanders thing for his xbox - I assume it was a game with some kind of figure but I actually have zero idea what these things are! is there a TV show on them or are they just computer games?

Skylanders is just a set of computer games. The little figures unlock different characters and areas in the games. You can't play the game without any characters. Its exactly the same principle as disney infinity (I think disney copied the skylanders concept).

The game can be single player or multiplayer and is better for encouraging teamwork than some of the others since the two characters playing are tied to one another.

The first game came out two years ago and is just called skylanders. The next one came out last autumn and is called Skylanders Giants. The figures from the first game can also be used with skylanders giants but there are also new "giant" i.e. sightly larger characters.

The new one came out last week and is called skylanders swapforce. Same concept, different adventure but this time you can take the heads off the characters and swap them about the create your own "combined power" characters. The reason this is important is that each character is from a particular "element" sky, life, water etc which makes them stronger when they are in certain areas. I think there are six elements and ideally you would have at least one character from each but as I understand it you can still complete the game (just not unlock all areas) even if you only had one character.

With any of the games you need the portal of power to make it work. You only need one portal of power though, it works with all games. My suggestion would be to buy the starter pack for swap force which includes the portal of power, the game and a couple of swappable characters. Be careful if buying on line, not all of the "swap force" characters are swappable which rather misses the point.

Blimey, you can tell I have two boys!