What Lego or Playmobil set gets played with most?

[DragonMamma]

My DS is almost 5 and just starting to get in to Lego and Playmobil.

We bought him a Lego Junior set last Christmas and he's really enjoyed playing with it recently. He also likes to play with the Playmobil stable at the CM's.

I'd like to get him a relatively big-ish set this year but I'm absolutely baffled by all the sets and types.

What gets played with most in your house?

I'm looking for something around £50 and ideally a bargain.

Lego city was very short lived here. Star wars lego however has been played with from ages 4 right through to almost 11 and DS1 (nearly 11) has asked for more star wars lego for christmas.

Love the campervan. Down to £39.08 on Amazon just now.

atticus what sets in particular? Ds does love Star Wars.

I'll go and look at the campervan now...

My DS has a playmobil volcano with some dinosaurs... It's a firm favourite!

DS loves Lego Mixels. Making the small monsters then bashing them up and making bigger ones (you can download booklets from the Lego website).

Or any Lego with wheels.

Any lego. Set is built over then dismantled and added to previous lego for new builds.

I did add the roof tile, wheels and door / window sets to pep it up a bit.

Any lego star wars set. Mine have had lots over the years. The Endor rebel camp was very popular.

This year we've bought them the death star as a surprise...

Depends on character of kids. DS1 loves Lego, especially Ninjago and superhero sets.

DS2 love his playmobil volcano with dinosaurs and he also has one of the dragon castles which they both play with.

I agree that Lego city has not been much of a hit as the kids seem more into the characters you get with the branded sets.

There are lots of smaller star wars sets if he's almost 5. I'd buy a couple of the smaller sets. The big ones can be a bit daunting until they get used to following the instructions.

The trouble with Lego is that it falls to bits when they try to actually play with it, it's more for show. The Playmobil camper van is a great start to a Playmobil collection!

PM - Dragons & dragon castle. Construction stuff, especially the remote control crane. Campervan and swimming pool. The police vehicles.

Playmobil pirate ship and other bits or volcano most popular with DS over the last few years.

Lego chima a massive hit, but it's fiddly and fragile so I wouldn't recommend for a 5 year old. City was good at that age. Fire, police, space etc.

Playmobil here! The zoo, camper van, vet set, swimming pool set, volcano and dinosaurs, and safari set. I love Playmobil... More than the dc do!

We're all about Jurassic World Lego these days (although was sad to see a goat and a cow from DS2's farm set being lowered into the raptor enclosure in a make shift sling tonight )

I have girls but the most played with by far is the Campervan, the pool and the horse stables.

Playmobil castle gets played with way more than any of the other sets here (7 and 5 year old boys).

As someone said, Lego falls apart when you try to play with a built set, so mine tend to build it once then add it to all the other Lego and build spaceships. So the best sets have been small Star Wars ones they can mix and match. They love the mini figures best.

Actually, the best Lego set we got, thinking about it, was a bucket of bricks with a leaflet suggesting what you could build. It was a great starter set, DS loved it, and all Lego since has ended up in that bucket (mini figs now have their own).

I don't think it matters massively. Get a big set with lots of different types of pieces and he'll play away endlessly ime. We got the police one and I think he has the mine. He's had Star Wars and Chima and agree they are less playable (fragile etc) but on the other hand they produced some novel Lego pieces that I see him reusing regularly. He's 6 now.

OSET but that is sort of the point of lego, it's meant to come apart and recreated and made into other stuff. Apart from which most of the sets DSs had were pretty robust apart from one very expensive star wars one that for some reason just wasn't very stable at all.

DSs have thousands of pounds worth of the stuff. They actually enjoyed the lego city stuff and DS1 liked the houses in particular. However I do agree that they did get a lot of play value form the star wars stuff - more so all they characters rather than the vehicles -they tended to mix up the vehicles and make their own designs but loved having darth vader and all the guys with their lightsabers and the guns to ride in them. In general they'd use the lego city to build backdrops and scenes to play star wars around......then the pirates would arrive..... :o

My great nephew loves the superhero sets with batman etc in that you get now. However you do get a lot less lego for your money in the branded ones as you are paying for the licence of the brand as well as the actual pieces. It seems expensive but they do get a lot of use and it is indestructable.

They did have a couple of Wild west type playmobil sets but I think it really wasn't versatile enough for them as it was difficult for them to adapt it to their own story line. I think it really depends on the child though.

Dd 5 loves the vets surgery swimming pool and camping set.

This year she wants Scooby doo Lego....that looks quite good.

She has some of the Lego car and aircraft sets. Very complicated to build the actual thing but she just designs random cars etc with it.

TBH I think Lego is only great in this house because it is fortified with the mountain of Lego DH still has from his childhood so he can build things like a visitors centre and a monorail around the recently bought sets which makes it more playable IMO.

I suspect it depends on your child. DS loves lego, almost any set. He builds it into following the instructions, then adds it to his large collection and builds his own things, again and again (and again).

The playmobil isn't played with as much. That might be because the lego never goes away so that we can get the playmo out...

The playmo stuff also comes to pieces - which I personally find more frustrating, as it's not meant to. The school and the western fort are particularly bad for this. The take along western city is probably my personal favourite, as it packs away neatly and has lots of play in it too.

They are all good toys though, so I think you have to go with what you know about what your DS likes.

Thanks for all your responses, I've got some serious Googling to do.

Dd is 3.5 and last year acquired my old playmobil set which Is the 80's playground set. Quick google and they still do a playground one and a couple of the bits are the same. She loves it and it gets played with most days

Agree with pp that it depends on the child. Some seem to like realistic play (putting people in a car, going to school, organising horses and activities around a stable, putting out fires etc). Others seem to prefer more random/fantasy setups, in which case eg a police station is probably not so fun.
Some really like to centre their play around a certain building, others want to build something different every day and would feel restricted by having a specific backdrop.

I made the mistake early on of buying too much of certain Playmobil themes to make it more realistic (think play park, duck pond, portaloo, car etc etc), but my dd more or less ignored that. She has always preferred to mix more random stuff (a handful of Egyptians, some babies, some trees and some animals.) She ignores houses, castles etc and builds her own.

And my ds ignored the Playmobil dinosaurs he received when he was 4, but loved setting up knights with weapons etc between 5 and 8. Both kids ignored pirates and native indians. So you never know.

Same with lego, depends on the child really. I would say though, from observing ds and his friends over the years, that having lots of minifigures and weapons/accessories has been the source of endless play (ninjago, star wars, ninja turtles etc).

Agree that it is all great !