Kid's gifts that aren't worth the hype

[Andthenjust]

Are there any gifts/toys etc that your youngsters received that were just... Crap? Any over-rated stuff?
My two were given Elefun one year. What an ironic name; as it was anything but fun, as it didn't even work.

The big LOL ball that isn’t even a ball. My seven year old niece was very sweetly and politely underwhelmed when we opened it together. We did get 15 minutes of quality fizzing time though.

I love DS's fingerling and digibirds!

The much wanted Chatty Charlie sits unloved in our house along with a similar pug.

Agree with nocutsnobuttsnococonuts on shitty stocking fillers (we still have some unopened) and random unwanted crap.

Another vote for the pointlessness if Fingerlings. DTD's ended up with 2 each and they have been resolutely ignored apart from occasionally being made to trump. On current levels of use they've worked out at about £2/minutes use!

Finerlings are a waste. Also, the Paw Patrol lookout tower was a complete waste of money! My son has played with it a handful of times and now shoots his cars down the slide on occasion.

Agree on fingerlings.
I now let the kids decide if they want a sweet or a smelly stocking. Sweet means (obviously) sweets or sweet related items eg jelly belly did a bath range for a while, or maybe a pez dispenser. These are the only sweets that child would get- no selection box etc.
A smelly one is bubble bath, shower stuff, scented rubbers, putty etc. Anything that smells! Socks can sneak in either stocking as you get socks with sweets on them or socks get smelly!

This has cut down enormously on stocking shit that wasn’t ever played with past Boxing Day and is a hit with all four kids (pre school to teens)

I also got a LaLaLoopsy doll - I'm not sure it ever got played with (DD is not a great doll person but did have a few other dolls that did get playtime, nappy changes, put to bed and carpet picnics).

Slushi maker was also a fail - it just didn't work and was a lot of (parental) effort for not a lot of results.

Last year - Lego. She loved lego, asked for it for Christmas - but there are 4 sets (as I got some on sale in summer and forgot those when I went Christmas shopping) that are unopened still in the lego corner. She didn't open even 1. (I am going to "acquire" some of those soon, and enjoy them myself instead!).

With the lego, I think she just grew out of it (possibly temporarily) between Halloween and Christmas.

Because she had been playing with it LOADS over summer and early autumn, and it was still on the letter to Santa in early December.

We've moved into things like sailing gear or electronics now though, toys are almost done with.

Sorry to derail a bit - but has anyone found they bought an aqua doodle and it's gone unused?

I'm tempted by one, but not if I'm going to need to store something big for no reason!

Pinstripe dd2 loves her aqua doodle and it folds really small so doesn’t take much room to store. It’s great for taking away with us or for when she wants to do painting and I can’t be arsed with actual paints.

(You can also get generic ones on amazon for about £8)

My dd has not even bothered to hatch her stupidly overpriced hatchimal she desperately wanted for Christmas. Fingerlings, sullvanian family, games all sit untouched. Very few toys get played with in our house, they prefer drawing, colouring, reading a book or being outside on a bike, scooter, slide, playing ball etc

Anything advertised on telly.
Also quiz your kids about why they want xxx. Mine wanted the £200 Lego Ewok village which was a simple no. Turned out only wanted a Lego Ewok. Got a few for about 6 quid on Ebay. Child couldn't have been more ecstatic with the whole thing.
Travel hungry hippos is better than the original as the balls can't get lost...

Moon sand, magic sand, aqua sand. I hate it all. Gets everywhere. It's worse than play dough. I threw the badly mixed lumps away & they've never asked about it.

Lol i agree with most of the stuff you guys have mentione d!
Omg moon sand/kinetic sand... Im still hoovering that crap out of the carpet.
Hatchimals are liked by dd2, but shes only interested in the hatching part. dont know where the actual animals are

Vtech Toot Toot anything. Absolute rubbish. I've had it for 4 years now and have seen trying to sell it for 3!

namethatchange my kids are like that - prefer paper/pens/bikes to 'toys '. One year I got them a huge box each full of packs of printer paper, colouring books, stamps, pens etc. I did it as a sort of joke presents as previous year they moaned when they got loads of crayons. They loved the art box though.

I agree with previous poster about the £60 LOL round bag of crap that DD wanted and got bored with all the fiddly opening, in the end I opened it for her and she was massively underwhelmed with the small, cheap plastic dolls that emerged.

Also anything ‘fun’ that I find for the stockings. Because there are so many gifts they actually want the fun gifts just get overlooked and I end up taking them to the charity shop in March!

Also the FurReal pets, they get played with for an hour then never touched again!

Are the LOL surprise things basically nicely packaged lucky bags from the 90s? If anyone remembers them.

Hatchimals were a terrible waste of money. Not been looked at once since hatching. We got more use out of the lol giant not-a-ball, but not enough to justify the price!

Another big waste of money was the plate on set with a spinny thing to allegedly make swirly sweets. Did not work!

I quite like Lego and my dc get a lot of use out of collectable tat like shopkins/lols/twosies etc.

Pinstripe, Aquadoodle wasn’t very popular here. My two seemed to make most of the sheet wet in a couple of minutes, then lost interest as it needed to dry.

agree fingerlings utter rubbish and tyler the tiger too!
also re hatchimal, such a shame there are no decent interactive toys.

Re craft kits - DJECO all the way - stunning easy to use...

My 4yo has a birthday a few days before Christmas so we get a double whammy of 'stuff' all at once.

The only thing she really wanted as a Hatchimal, which I was reluctant to buy because I knew they were crap (and I even posted on here about it and loads of people commented saying I was being mean for not wanting to get her the thing she wanted ). It has literally been played with twice.

Also fingerling has barely been played with, and the Little Live Pets kitten thing is also never played with!

I have learnt my lesson big time and I'm cutting right down this year and not buying any gimmicky toys. Maybe stuff like Lego, a marble run, and some more creative type stuff as this is what she seems to enjoy the most.

Fucking Fingerlings. Hatchimal. Robots.
Tbh the only gifts mine (7 & 9) use regularly are artist materials, books, games & clothes. Oh and a cheap-ish drone.

Craft kits end up unused in the corner.

Lego is loved here, I get roped into rebuilding sets but I love the stuff so that's fine by me.