Message to toy manufacturers

[Paula71]

Okay, I understand you don't want your product rattling around in the box, nor do you want it nicked by some ne'er do well with a hankering for Lofty or Scoop.

But why oh why oh why do you need to have those fiddly plastic ties around every single inch of the toy! Having gotten into the package with two excited toddlers desperate to play with their new Santa sent toys (ahem) DH and I had then to spend the next half our breaking fingers trying to untwist these ties. Plus they look hellishly dangerous once taken off, and you wrap them round any available wheel on the toy, or arm and leg if a little plastic dude is involved. I now have a collection of 73 of these ties. Yes, I was sad enough to count and we didn't have that many toys!

And I thought the challenge would be in building and hiding the two cozy coupes!

Next year, lesson learned, we will be untying the toys then putting them back in the boxes so when ds twins open their presents they can then immediately play with them rather than spend the next wee whiley squeaking excitedly as each tie is defeated!

I thank you. I will now get off my soap-box (as I am not attached by plastic ties.)

I'm with you all the way with this one!!!

..........bet we all smile at this one

Paula71, I was going to post a very similar message on Christmas Eve after wrestling for about an hour and a half with the ever so high quality and attractive(mmm) Barbie Swan Lake carriage and associated Barbie and Ken dolls. Maybe its the manufacturers' little joke on us! Although, considering the amount of money they make from us doting parents, all presents should come ready made, free of tags and gift wrapped.

Right, I'll get off my toy box now. Off to have a coffee, oh and try and locate all those little bits of plastic 'detail' already lost under sofas.

message withdrawn

There should be a special place in Hell for the person who decided that dd's Neopet had to be 'unpacked' by unscrewing 5 (!) screws with a phillips screwdriver. Do these people have no heart???

Tell me about it, by the time you have the blasted thing open they loose interest and Barbie lost most of her hair, how do you explain alapechia to a 5 year old!

i felt exactly the same
i battled with tons of plastic ties then had the fisherprice little people garage to put together
another nightmare!
next year, i will unpack, untie and assemble things before i wrap them
in theory anyway!

robinw

We've so far got a broken wheel of a car which you are supposed to be able to change with a mini jack and the pull string Porsche from ELC seems to have got it's cord snagged and won't pull out unless you use brute force - both within 15 mins of opening.

LOL at this thread! We still have some toys left in the boxes because we couldn't face the 'Krypton Factor' challenge of reaching and untwisting those blasted plastic ties. Another thing - if you've spent a small fortune on a battery-operated toy (stop sniggering - not THAT sort of toy!) the least they could do is provide a couple of free batteries. Okay. Rant over.

LOLhow true,dh and i stayed up till 2am taking all the toys out the boxes,buiding them,cutting the ties and then wrapping them up then the kids woke up at 4am still we didn't have to deal with everything on xmas day and were able to have a nap to recover

LOL and I'm nodding in agreement! At least your children play with the toys enough to break them.

Dd spent yesterday playing with a self-constructed maze game (the sort that has little ball bearings you have to get into holes ? iykwim). She used the base of a Baby Annabel clothes box, into which she glued an empty GBA game box. The aim is to get the balls, made from the silver paper wrappings on Roses chocolates, into the GBA box. And she was as happy as Larry.

oh I am so glad I am not the only one. This was dd 1st Christmas so she only has a few small presents, but try making an 11 month old wait for their daddy to undo a thousand twiddly ties is not much fun. Next year I have vowed to unpack and untie all her things before I wrap them!

Paula71 - DH and I were complaining ahlf of Christmas morning about the exact same thing. Nightmare isn't it. Still keep finding stray ones now.

OH, and fitting battries with a screwdriver was a pain too. I know why it is important but just takes so much longer to fit. Why can't toys have battries in them when they come. We spent £28 on Christmas Eve on batteries alone

I agree!!!

We didn't spend a fortune on batteries, but now all our remote controls have none (I'm just not very organised am I? )

a friend suggested keeping all those tie things for tieing up plants, & they were very handy for my sweet peas. so i kind of like them, especially as dh seems incapable of undoing them so I get to look more competant. ok, my life isn't very exciting..

I to was going to post a message about this. We still have a swan lake horse and carraige in box as i can't face it after struggling to figure out where all of the bits are supposed to go in the swan lake castle.

Indeed it was the FisherPrice Little People that got us stuck too popsycal! We bought the demolition sets, one for each boy as well as the Bob The Builder stuff.

The IKEA wooden railway - rip open plastic, assemble track. Now why can't they all do that!

Am going to think up something to do with the plastic ties (maybe give them to my dad for use in the garden holding up plants to sticks or something!)

crazy packaging is nothing compared to the gift dd unwrapped from a friend box stated age 5+ it took two adults nearly 2 hours to construct!

The best tip a friend gave me this year was to assemble my boys Bey Blades before putting them back in the boxes and in their stockings. It took dh about an hour to assemble two of them ! Thank god we didn't wait till xmas morning.
Ds1 thought Santa was very thoughtful !!