Good toy, bad toy

[Hurricaneinateacup]

I know all children are different but I thought we could share our good toys and not so successful toys!

Best thing ds has ever had is the Imaginext castle. He's 5 and a half now and had it when he was 4 and I think it's been used nearly every day since then.
Also used loads are the playmobil dinosaurs. They are lovely.

Bad toy: family member bought him one of those electric ride on toys. The first one didnt work properly. Changed it and the second one worked for about a fortnight. Changed it again and the one we have now works but has hardly been used. Ds just isn't particularly interested. Plus it's bloody quick and I worry about other people's actual real cars being scratched.
Other misses have been anything with basically only one use such as animatronic toys and remote controlled anything.

Good toys for dd, 21 months so far have been tea set, pots and pans and any books or balls
Bad toys: anything electronic really, but particularly the laugh and learn tool bench from fisher price, it's barely had any use.
She's getting duplo for Christmas so I'm hoping that will be a big hit with her

Actually can I just add zhu zhu pets to list of pointless toys. I've just been reminded as I moved the box which they are in and now they are all squeaking. I need to take them to the charity shop. Maybe someone else would like them?!

I agree with anything animatronic having very limited value/appeal.
The toy laptops have been largely ignored.

Whereas the more traditional things - tea set, Ikea kitchen, wooden ikea brio, schleich animals, die cast cars are played with almost every day.

good:
ikea wooden train set
Megabloks
Mega sketcher
Schleich or ELC dinosaurs
Tomy whistle bath Dolphins
Wooden alphabet blocks
Grimms rainbow

Bad:
ELC Happyland rocket. The figures are fine, the rocket itself is cheap and nasty despite costing £30 full price!! Doors constantly fall off, irritating...
Likewise the ELC teapot house. Looks cute but too many small bits that get easily missplaced and the front door always falls off.
Wooden peg puzzles of any kind. Always end up losing the pieces for them.
Squirty bath toys. If you don't squeeze every last drop of water out every time they're used disgusting hard water gets trapped inside and when they're squeezed brown bits come out .

There's more bad toys than good IME. Very few toys make the grade in this household books are their favourite...

Oh another timeless one is a tea set of any kind. We have the Belle and Boo one, it's adorable. Although once again a lot of small parts. My DC are really good at losing small parts of sets...

Hands down for all of our 5 dc is the huge collection if Schleich animals. We keep them in baskets in our lounge so they are only played in there but they all play for hours every weekend with them and have for years! The total collection is a few hundred pounds worth but we have home made monkey logs, tree houses and log fences to complete it all. I no longer buy farm animals now as they all prefer jungle/ wild beasts!
Trampoline is a close second followed by sylvanian families.

Flip easel/blackboard is easily the most played with thing in this house. Also
toy kitchen
dolls pram

Anything by imaginext. really hard wearing with a great resale value. Kids play with it ALL THE TIME.

Bad Toy - ELE-FUCKING-FUN!! Pure crap

Good : my son loves hot wheels cars has probably 20 of them and plays with them every single day.

play kitchen - great investment

Bad: hot wheels tracks - haven't found a good one yet....flimsey construction at best.

playmobile is fantastic unless your kid has a young sibling - due to all the tiny bits our elder son can only play with it at the table which is limiting.

Melissa and Doug wooden play food - mine can't be the only kids to bite and mouth their fake food - the paint comes off which makes it look crap and made in China so god only know what is in the paint TBF.

Best buys

Scrabble
Puppet theatre
Monster high dolls
Jenga
Wimpy kid books
Spirograph
Lego
Xbox/wii/3ds

Worst buys

Ball pool and balls
Anything inflatable
Aqua beads
Play doh - I remember spending ages shopping around and making sure they had one of each colour but within 5 mins all they had was a huge pile of brown.
Moon sand - I'm still finding bits of it everywhere,even though we've moved house since it was chucked out!