Where do you buy kids toys from online?

[mdpierre]

Where do you buy kids from online and what makes it a good toy?
I am looking for my toddler and pre-schooler.

Babipur and Yesbebe.

TicketyBoo for Djeco toys.

I am very picky with toys for my preschooler. I've deliberately bought few but higher quality toys because I don't want my house overrun with crap.

When I buy a new toy I look whether she already has something with a similar function, how it fits in with stuff we already have, how it adds to my daughter's life, quality, ethical and whether I can sell it on well afterwards.

I tend to pick toys that promote creativity more than anything and that can be played with in more than one way.

Oh and space is at a premium for me so that really factors in my decisions.

Some of the toys we have:
Lanka Kade barn with animals
Hape kitchen
Le Toy Van grocery basket with scanner
DUPLO
Hubelino (marble run that combines beautifully with Duplo)
Wooden trains
Djeco threading toy
2 Waldorf dolls (DD named them Pink and Mo )
Wheelybug
Puzzles
Melissa and Doug stamps
Play doh
1 set of very good quality pencils

It looks like quite a lot but it is quite sparse compared to other families I know!

In hindsight I probably would have chosen the Duplo train rather than wooden ones just to minimise the number of toy categories we have.

Wow this great I love this list it has certainly given me some inspiration- thank you.
We love wooden toys too but we found you have to careful on the quality..

Depends what kind of toy- your obvious shops are Argos, Smyths, Amazon.. but I’m sure there’s lots of little small toy makers too! I buy a lot second hand on Facebook Marketplace! Saves so much money, especially if you know a specific item you want!

What makes a good toy is what captures your child’s imagination. Not what it’s made of. I have a friend who drives me insane with her superiority of wooden toys.. her kid chooses every plastic toy my kid has when she comes to play & mum seems surprised 🙄

Kids love a range of toys. I love wooden toys but equally, plastic has its place. My daughter plays with her wooden toy kitchen, wooden blocks, wooden musical instruments & wooden figures (we have Lankakade, they are lovely!). She also loves her dolls, doll pram, animal figures, happyland small world, tea set & teddies!

I’m careful with toy buying, I don’t buy for the sake of it so we don’t get too cluttered! I’m keen to encourage imagination, role play, small world etc, so that feeds what we have & what I choose! My little girl spent 30 minutes having a tea party with her teddies tonight - a £5 tea set from Wilko plus Melissa & Doug food & cake from Amazon! It was lovely to observe 🧡

We have a mix of wooden and plastic. Some of the wooden stuff is really lovely, but DD does enjoy some of the more garish stuff too on occasion! I think the key to not being overrun with stuff is rotating toys and having proper storage.

DD's current favourite are a set of nursery rhyme finger puppets (Humpty, baa baa black sheep, incy wincy spider) etc. We have them in a bag and she will spend ages taking each one out, bringing it to me for the song, then bringing me the next one, etc.

Aldi sometimes have toy sales. We got a wooden kitchen for £30. JoJo Maman Bebe have some nice toys too.

We love whirlygig toys, shops in Kent but a lovely website. The shops are brilliant, you can play with EVERYTHING and the staff join in!

My mum has a shop for the grandchildren to play with, with a cash register and little tins of food and groceries, and countless hours have been spent playing with it.

Second Babipur here. We're all about the wooden;
Lanka kade
Grimms
Holztiger etc
I pretty much refuse to buy plastic toys unless they are second hand 😂
With wooden toys I've found the more you spend the better quality it is to be honest.
We have grimms friends in cups and my near two year old spends ages taking them in and out. That and stacking wooden animals or trying to build a rainbow tower

Oh but completely agree with pp that plastic toys have their place. My son also loves a singing train but I just prefer to try and make use of second hand rather than buy new

@wobblywibble I agree that plastic toys can be fine, I really love the Duplo and the Hubelino.

I greatly detest noisy electronic toys and we have almost none in the house. The only one is a Melissa and Doug vehicle puzzle.

This is purely because I just know I will go mental. For the same reason noisy books are limited. .

She has a few real musical instruments that I am oddly enough completely fine with!

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere or have a genuine reason why you can't leave the house why don't you just go to an actual shop? Plenty of shops sell good quality toys and they aren't all plastic. As someone has said upthread the Wilkos wooden tea sets are brilliant (you can buy them through their website if you really do have to use the Internet).

Lidl and aldi both have brilliant wooden toy ranges but they’re only in stock occasionally. My 2 year old’s most played with toys are his toy kitchen, tea set and food and his hoover - he’s very domesticated 🤣

PS I also buy a lot of toys on eBay