What are you all getting for your kiddos? Toys seems to get worse and worse every year so I have a hard time finding anything decent these days.
I have boys and girls 5 and under. They absolutely love and I can recommend toys like: magnet tiles (like the Magna/Picasso brands), Duplo Legos, animal figures (like the Schleich brand), the Melissa and Doug food toys (right now the ice cream set is the favorite of those; https://www.melissaanddoug.com/products/scoop-serve-ice-cream-counter), and anything to do with art/coloring/stickers or whatever sort of craft. Now the dumb Duplo likes to shove non-Whites as the figures so avoid that if you can, otherwise my kids love to build with them. Also, I wouldn't get younger kids animal figures like deer or moose with antlers because they will bend them off. I know there's cheaper brands but from my experience anything cheaper than Schleich and they're cheap, ugly trash. Mega Blocks are fun too for them but our set seems to have stopped connecting (they're older hand me downs), is that something that happens often?
Do you all have any recommendations for toys/brands for young children? Or ones to stay away from specifically? Children's book recommendations would be appreciated too! Feel free to use this thread for recommending gifts for other age groups as well.
All of my kiddos are pretty into pokemon, so my oldest got a few booster packs and cards I got off Amazon (the cards they hunt for are typically only a few dollars, and you can sneak them into the packs to get cool reactions and get them excited when opened). My oldest loves collecting them and doing pretend battles. He also really is into legos, and anything I’m doing honestly. He’s very into play swords and pretend. Walmart sells these foam swords that light up for like $4 each so we have like 15 of them. You can attach them together to make a darth maul lightsaber looking sword that is pretty cool. Here’s the link -
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Adventure-Force-Light-Up-Sword-Ages-4-Years-and-up/917089598?classType=REGULAR&athbdg=L1103
Just have to attach the ends together with a twist. Add in a treasure chest with some fake gold/princess to rescue/trollinstein the monster and the kids have a great time.
My middle child in the gift receiving age is my girl so she loves dolls and anything princess/fairy/unicorn/cats/family stuff (Schleich, like you said has great stuff for all of this). We got her some calico critter houses this year too which were second hand pick ups in great condition for only 100 bucks. Came with three houses and a treehouse so she will really love that.
My youngest in gift age is 3 and loves legos. He adores ninjago (no, I don’t let them watch the gay show) and loves dinosaurs and imaginext figures. You can usually find imaginext sets and figures really cheap second hand in the Facebook marketplace so I’d highly recommend those. They have a lot of the superheroes, which I don’t like… but hey, they’re kids and they don’t get to watch the shows or movies so it’s not that bad imo.
Since I can’t stand modern day kids toys and entertainment I typically go back to what I had. I do have some original power rangers (yes, I know it’s an Israeli company) that they like. Would never go past the original series though. I also have the original TMNT animatronic looking figures with shredder which was a cool gift last year. Street sharks was cool, and I plan to get my 3 year old the hammerhead one and the bad guy toy this year… that’s pretty much what I’ve got. Hope any of it helps you or anyone else!