Christmas presents you thought would be a huge hit but were actually a major flop

[Gillian76]

I'll start.

ELC wooden dolls' house for DD1. Played with about 5 times

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ELC Wooden Castle.

And if you knew the hassle I went through to finally get that.

Scalextric. He has actually managed to lose the bit of the track that the lead goes into.

Was that last year, LGJ? I think I remember the furore.

Aquadraw gets used for all of 5 minutes

What a shame. This makes me feel a bit down. You get so excited wrapping them up and thinking they'll love them and then ....they don't!
I haven't had this yet, luckily. My 2 play with all their things at some time or another. They go through phases of liking things.

Another one for the ELC Wooden dolls house. I have a horrible feeling that I hould have learnt a lesson from that with DD and not have got DS a wooden castle for this year.

Thomas Aquadraw deluxe cost me £50 last year. Played with for 5 mins about 10 times all year.

it is a bit demoralising when you are so sure you've got it right!

It was G76.

tractor tom playset - only played with by friends

wooden trainset - played with occasionally but it was only me putting it together that handled it more.

blimey trefusis - couldn't you take it back?

Gillian our wooden dollshouse was NEVER played with - it looked nice in the corner of the room...but i guess i wanted it more then dd.

Last year we got ds1 a robosapien (at great expence) and thet has probably been played with for a total of one hour! He like to show his friends he has it but there is not much play in it

trefusis - just read your post - its the same series as the robosapien

ohhh
our wooden dollhouse that I fell in love with has gathered dust pretty much since dd had it for christmas for her 3rd bday - 2 years ago
maybe dd2 or dd3 might like in a few years time and can re-wrap!

sally sunflower game

balamory jump mat thingy

Looking at all the wooden toys that were misses on this thread, do you think kids generally prefer bright plastic?

I've got friends who will only give their little boy 'tasteful' toys - and it's their house so fair enough - but I bought him a noisy plastic car and he loved it. (They didn't - it was in the loft after a couple of months).

Just interested, as I'm due to have my first next year, and have been looking at some toys and wrinkling my nose.

ELC wooden castle here too! It is very rarely played with & just ends up a storage box for all DS's other abandoned toys!
Oh & the Playmobil airport, which ended up in as many pieces as it started of in & has been put back into the box!

well I give a big thumbs down to nearly every wooden toy we've been given. A zoo truck shape sorter thing with animals, wooden noahs arc, sure there's a loooonnnnggg list, but all of them broke. bright plastic (quality mind you) is generally more durable, from my experience anyway.

And to the op, well, walkie talkies, I loved the idea. Never used. A shoulder massager (never got out of box)

fingers crossed for this year. sigh

I bought the nove of "The Colour Purple" for my aged mother.
Since it was a Stephen Spielberg film, I thought it was a bittersweet tale of a young girl growing up in the deep south, bit of romantic easy reading.

...oops
Apparently , it was very different to the film with incest, rape and lesbianism. She referred to it after as "that filthy book".

remote controlled car for DS from ELC
He prefers to get down on the floor and roll his matchbox cars along.