Follow on toys from Happyland

[ginauk84]

My 3 year old daughter has loved her Happyland but now loves being able to manipulate the playmobil figures and sit them down, move their arms etc. However the Playmobil itself drives us mad as it falls apart so easily. Is there a range that has moveable figures with things such as the fairground, boats, trains, houses etc I have seen dolls and doll houses but she likes to do a bit more rather than just a house. Do the sylvannian figures move about or are they fixed? Looking at some of the sets it looks like some of those come with tiny pieces too?
Has anyone got any suggestions? She isn't overly girly so would like pirate sets etc but it would be nice to have a compatible range rather than little sets by different manufacturers

You can move Sylvanians arms and legs, but I think the stuff is very fiddly. My dd has some Sylvanian family figures that she plays with in her little wooden doll house, As it has chunkier furniture, she takes their clothes on and off too. The Sylvanian cars look quite good and not too detailed.

Playmobil vehicles are quite good and robust - the recycling van was a hit here, maybe one of the simpler ambulances, like the coastguard one? The camper van set is great and quite sturdy once built, had no problems with it.I've also got my dd the horse stable for Christmas and she is a bit younger than yours. She already has the car and horse box and plays with that a lot.

Otherwise Imaginext seems to be a good in between thing, might be worth looking to see what play sets they have.

Ours loved Duplo and Planx.

Actually out of the 2, Planx was probably their favourite and is still sometimes used now for giant games of Jenga.

Our DD was not remotely girly and hated Sylvanian familes, she loved Tomica World trainsets, dinosaurs (just the ones from early learning) that she would put into Zoo enclosures made from Planx or Duplo

Have you tried playmobil 123?

We kept going with Happyland until recently (DD almost 5) because with a younger DS (weapon of mass destruction) playmobil wasn't an option, but DD has been coveting it for ages... However now that DS is older (and more mature ) we are getting playmobil for Christmas. Auntie and Uncle are getting her the camper van and Santa is bringing playmobil water slides... Both bought greatly reduced using camel camel camel Amazon tracker.

Satsuki I thing you have hit the nail on the head and it's about picking the right playmobil set. We went for the playground, water park and pony dressage set and they all come apart and are in so many bits. However like you say horsebox and car are fine and looking a bit more I can see things like the planes, cars, some houses, stables etc that are a bit more robust so I think that might be best.

I do like the look of the imaginext stuff too, not heard of that so will look at that in the shops.

We stuck with Happyland until dd was about 5 - equivalent to fisher price house etc from our era.
We then moved onto sylvanians and playmobil. At 9.5 playmobil ponies, stable are still played with very frequently - sylvanians are so fiddly and have never had the same play value in our house. The sylvanians are less manipulate than the playmobil figures.