In general, I'm pretty careful about the toys I buy for my son, mostly because our small Brooklyn apartment can only hold so much. But I've had some missteps, including the huge purchasing mistake above. Let me paint the scene for you: it was an unseasonably warm spring day and I had just stood for two hours watching my son get every penny's worth of his bouncy house, inflatable slide, etc. wristband at a local street fair…
I was suffering from street fair fatigue: hot, tired and cranky. We began to wend our way home through the crowds amidst the nauseating smell of grilled sausage and peppers, when my son became transfixed by a toy car zipping along a winding track, stopping, to his delight, to ride up an elevator and continue again.
This toy pretty much goes against everything I think a good toy should be, but for a mere $12 it could be ours and, more importantly at the time, we could be on our way home to recuperate on the couch. It was a moment of weakness for sure, but I plunked down the cash and we were on our way.
Thankfully, my husband was home and volunteered to assemble the track, all 80+ pieces of it. The toy is called City Car, made in China, and the box boasts that it is "Inspiring! Fun!" and will "Develop Kids' Intelligent and Creative Thinking, Improve their General Programming Abilities." The kit comes with a bunch of stickers to affix, many of which are kind of hilariously lost in translation (like, "Establish the urgent telephone here."). As far as I can tell, the track can only be set up in one configuration and we've yet to find another toy car in our collection whose wheels are wide enough to not fall through the tracks.
The City Car track remained on our coffee table (hanging off both sides) for a few days and my son did watch the car go round and round many times. I boxed it up while he was napping one day and it was only unboxed about 4 months later during a stretch of consecutive rainy days.
Now, I'm not really beating myself up about this purchase. Do I regret it? Sure, I do. Mostly because I feel guilty about its eventual resting place in a landfill. But I make lots of mistakes as a parent and in the scheme of things, this isn't keeping me up at night. But there are so many bad things about this toy that it occurred to me that there are specific lessons to learn from it and insights about avoiding poor toy purchases.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Buying a Toy:
1. Is it a passive toy?: Can you actually play with it or do you mostly watch it?
2. Is it Age Appropriate? Is it too young for your child or will they outgrow it very quickly? Or, is it too old for your child and you will either be storing it away until it's a good fit or your child will insist on using it and become frustrated every time. [The City Car I'm discussing might earn a point or two if my son were old enough to assemble it himself.]
3. Does It Require Assembly Each Time It's Used? This is an especially important consideration if your child doesn't have a dedicated play space like a play room or basement or other out of the way spot where a toy can stay for a long time. While there is novelty value to a toy that only comes out once in a while, in general, a toy that requires lengthy assembly and takes up considerable floorspace is not going to be played with often.
4. How Much Room Will It Take Up in Your Home? This relates to the question above about assembly and is particularly important if you live in a small home. It's just one of the realities of small space living - the size of a toy matters. We are currently in negotiations with my son over a large toy garage that he almost never uses - until we mention trading it in for something new (and smaller!) and then it gets an immediate flurry of use as he insists he loves it.
5. Is it Cheaply Made? I'm all for affordable toys and am a bargain hunter at heart, but there's a difference between something being inexpensive and being cheaply made. An inexpensive toy is not a good value if it's going to fall apart while your child is still enjoying it or before it can be handed down to someone else.
6. How much Play Power Does it Have? I wrote about this concept last year (attributed to Richard Gottlieb). The gist of it is this formula: Play Power (PP) = Joy + Durability / Cost. Put another way, the most fun for the least cost. Generally, classic toys like balls and blocks fall into this category. They are used for a long time because they are well made and span several age groups.
These are just a few things to think about before buying a toy, but a good place to start. What else would you add? What toy buying mistakes have you made?
(I should note that I took this box out today to jog my memory of some of the specifics and my son gleefully asked, "Are we going to put that together today!!!!")
(Image: Carrie McBride)
The Ultimate Used Furniture Cleaning Kit
Ana Creates a Community at Home
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Z2 iPod Dock and Wi...
Soda Recipe: Homemade Ginger Ale
Recipe: Spring Fruit and Nut Tabouli
This is a great list, simple and very helpful. I'm pretty sure we've all made similar regretable purchases, I'm glad it's not keeping you up at night :)
I think another good thing to keep in mind is: Is the Toy Open Ended, can the kid manipulate and reinvent the toy in many different ways? Blocks are perfect open ended toys, since they can be configured into anything a child can imagine. I found your post pretty remarkable concerning open-endedness of toys, as I have had the pleasure of playing with a very similar toy to the one you used as an example, but that was very much more open-ended. It is called Build-a-Road. This toy is similar in that it follows the car-on-a-track toy concept, takes up a pretty large amount of space, and is made of thin plastic. But the thing that makes it worth the money and space to me is that the design of the track and other components is so flexible, there are infinite ways to configure and expand it. My nephew received it for Christmas this year and the kids age 4 months to 7 years, as well as all of the adults were entertained by it for days. Granted the baby couldn't manipulate it, but he sure had a good time watching everyone else! I thought I'd offer it up as a foil, in as far as a purchased, plastic toy can serve that role. Thanks for the article!
I have similiar space issues, a 3.5 boy and almost 2 year old girl who are happy with the few toys that they have that fit into a small closet, including bikes. They both play with wooden trains, small toy cars, baby dolls, blocks, fabric tunnels, they make art, musical instruments for children, balls, stuffed animals and some yo gabba gabba action dolls. They really don't need much more, except of coarse a few bath toys of coarse and bubbles. Junk toys are such a drain on our environment. Ohdeedoh had that great green toy list and this is a wise list for a new parent. I will pass it on. :)
This is a much more helpful list than the "Does it make noise, a mess, or both?" qualifications I used to get in getting gifts for my younger cousins.
This is the biggest issue we've been having, but mostly of a "why do all toys nowadays seem to be battery powered and do one repetitive thing" problem. I've been looking for baby toys and get so mad in the toy aisles full of cell phone toys that chirp when you push a button or giant plastic space wasters that a knob moves and it takes 6 D batteries to make it sing "123" to you in spanish and english.
Then I look over and my baby is happy throwing a cup around. Go figure :)
I'm probably considered a minimalist among my other mom friends when it comes to toys. I scrutinize everything I buy for my almost three-year-old daughter, and I try to buy toys that are both age appropriate, but that she can grow with as well. It's not easy to find good toys. I've started looking online more for what I want to get my daughter when it comes time for her birthday or Christmas because the stores around here all carry the same ugly, plastic junk. I've tried to ask family to stick to buying wood toys as much as possible, and to definitely not go the battery operated route, but I get ignored. It's frustrating because I just end up donating the toys. My in-laws in particular can be bad about that. They go more for quantity than quality. I'd much rather have one meaningful, imaginative toy given to my daughter than three or four pieces of trash.
Ha ha, my in-laws bought my boys the same car set! It took my husband more than an hour to set up (no instructions included, so that rules me out from ever being able to assemble it!), was so loud that we had to move it outside where it took up our entire outdoor table. After about 6 weeks I got totally sick of it and used the fact that I needed the table for guests as an excuse to pack it away into the spare cupboard. Where it has remained for the past year...
Sometimes a toy is just a toy is just a toy. People become rabid about others choices. You know the BEST toys my son plays with repeatedly? Happy meal toys. He LOVES them. I laugh and think its sad an entire city has banned them. I have bought them without buying a meal. I keep them grouped and like I said he plays with them repeatedly. Kung fun panda set comes out alone and when friends are over. What didnt work? Blocks. Marble track. legos -, bane of MY existence and will NEVER be purchased again until my son is grown and has his own place and can read the ridiculous, worse then Ikea directions because at least those are BIG parts. Puppets. Mostly all wooden and woolen, ridiculously overpriced but your child and their child and their child will love it toys. Loved most all dress up toys esepcially hats, cowboy boots, a cape (play silks not so much) and a ddinosaur costume from halloween. Loved paper, crayons, markers, paints, glue, pompoms, etc. didnt like forced art activity. Also loved imaginext toys which wouldnt meet ,any criteria of the list but he all his friends play with them for hours. Bey blades also big. And the cheap toys he didnt like, we either sell in yard sales or take to a thrift store - bothof which are greener choices - but the cheap, oft maligned toys mentioned here are the ones kids snap right up...his transformers from mcdonalds which i found a big waste we couldnt even put out in the yard sale his friend came over and bought them all. Im happy if some things work out for you and not me, thats what makes the world go round but I find it annoying to be told my choices are wrong or I should chose a certain way because that worked for you.
Oh and moon sand, that was horrible.
I can't say I actually regret this purchase, but I was pretty ashamed of myself for caving into my son's daily pleas for a toy that was being sold, probably illegally, by a guy hanging out in the subway station on our way home from school every day. It was a light-up, spinning Spiderman head that, for some inexplicable reason, played the "Axel F" theme song from "Beverly Hills Cop" at a very fast tempo while it spun around frantically, shooting rays of colored light, until it would crash into a wall or an adult's foot and topple. This ridiculous toy, purchased for all of $6 (and probably made for a tenth of that), provided my son with so much glee for so long that I was actually a little sad when the battery died the other day and we had to toss it. It's the kind of thing I never would have thought to buy, but my son loved it more than all of his wooden firehouse sets and Brillo trains and craft supplies combined...
When my daughter was little large area toys (like the wooden city train set- Thomas the Train-type) were always the most awesome when they were sprawled all over the play area at the Children's Museum. Same for the Lego Room. And the Lincoln Log Table. The Hot Wheels Race Track Room. The Humongous & Frighteningly Strong Magnets Table... LOL! Sure, we had some Legos & such at home. But, at the Children's Museum one could literally roll around in mountains of Legos!! LOL! At the time, I think the yearly membership was $50. SO worth it. Of course, this was over 20 years ago & not everyone was a freak-shot about germs back then so we let our kid roll around in Lincoln Logs that some other kid just sneezed on. And her immune system thanks me for it. Home toys were mostly ones that she could play with alone, be creative & artistic with, put together with minimal assistance, and put away by herself.
I would love a whole series on types of toys that have worked with otheres, especially as the holiday season approaches. It would help to have some tried and true ideas from others! I know every kid is different but it helps to have a place to start.
My kid's favorite toys for the past three months or so have been map-puzzles - the Melissa and Doug US and Canada puzzles, as well as the Geopuzzle Europe (I've order Asia). He puts the puzzles together. He carries the pieces around. He makes the states and the countries have conversations. He finds the states in maps in books and matches the pieces to the map. He lines the pieces up all across the floor. Really, we can't get him to play with much of anything else. It's bizarre. I would never in a million years have thought that that sort of toy would get that much play. But he adores them. He's two, by the way. So it's really hard to know what's going to capture their interest. I do think it makes sense to build off what they love, though.
My 1 year old son's favorite toy at the moment is a half empty plastic water bottle. It crackles under his pudgy hands & he teeths on the end where the cold water can get to his gums.
This is *terrific* advice, but the story about the happy meal toys and the spinning Spiderman head get to the heart of the matter. We just don't know what the kids will fixate on. Even if you are a parent who buys few toys at far-between intervals (I endeavor to be that parent, but fail because I like to play with them too), your kid is likely to fixate on one or two and get hours of joy from it. You just never know. Kids are random.
When my son was barely walking we bought him a $10 plastic dump truck for Christmas--I walked by the display at Target and thought "what the heck." We didn't even wrap it. My wife pulled it out of the bag and he squealed. Used it daily for months and weekly for years. Best purchase ever. Now closing in on five years later, its in bad shape but still gets used. And every time I look at it I hear that squeal.
My almost 4-year old girl plays with 2 or 3 stuffed toys and two strollers for them (one of them we made ourselves) and the rest of her toys are pieces of fabric, string, papers she drew on, random things she finds like a compass (sometimes it's a phone, sometimes a necklace and so on) and she also likes bags and pouches where she can stuff her treasures ;)
Sometimes she plays with a dollhouse.
But really, she could play all day long with just her one favorite plush cat and random stuff from around the house. Most real toys she rejects, so she really doesn't have much.
Legos and Bionicles/Hero Factory are what my son loves. If we got rid of every other toy (and we may do that soon) he would be happy with just bins these things. He's especially interested in customizing his own "mini figs" (the lego people). The goal now is to save up to build a 3d printer so he can design his own pieces.
All we have at my house are Legos, bionicles and thomas and friends railway. My son is interested in nothing else. This is a great list I wish I had read it before buying the track master thomas set. He would have enjoyed the wooden railway much more. As far as toys ending up in landfills....most church ran preschools are more than happy to get free unbroken toys. There is also donating them. Then there is( what I love most about Apartment Therapy), reinventing it into something new. My son has busted up some of his Thomas toys. A difficult feat I assure you. I reused what I could of them. There was a James that split in half. So I took him apart and glued him to the front of a dresser and painted tracks under him. Then there was the crossing signal he snapped in two. So that became part of a picture frame. The tunnel he stepped on and cracked got a nail file taken to it, some paint and wood. It is now a piggy bank. I am sure if it came down to it you could come up with some really fun to do with your car roller coaster thingy.
Some of your kids favourite toys, will usually be the most unexpected ones. We picked up a small bear with a halloween pumpkin dress on it randomly on a shopping trip after my then 18 month old held it hostage. 5 years later this toys is still one of the most played with toys. It's just a stuffed bear with an orange dress. I can't figure it out. There are tons of bears in this house but that one is by the far the most loved.
@EHF Great idea - I'll see what we can do! Thanks!
@Ninaetc I think you misunderstand me. I agree that sometimes the cheapest, "junkiest" toys get the most play and provide the most enjoyment to kids. The car track I'm writing about above would be no better if it were wooden and expensive. The problem is that it's totally impractical for our home because of it's size and the time it takes to assemble and that you can't really play with it, only watch it. This same post could have been written about a "high end" toy.
My entry for junky toy that my kid bizarrely loves: we got a hand-me-down box of junky toys, none of which I would have ever bought (lots of happy meal toys!). And several teenage mutant ninja turtle figures. My two year old daughter, who had no idea about the t.v. show, just LOVED one of them, carried it with her everywhere. People would come up to her and ask her if she liked her teenage mutant, and she would be like "What are you talking about, it is a turtle!"
Best "toy" we got, that has gotten the most play over the years: I bought 2 yards of rayon chiffon from the fabric store in each color of the rainbow. They have been used for forts, for dress-ups, as play food, as landscape features (rivers, fields) for other toys, for dancing with, the list goes on. Also, it was a funny discovery for me when my kids were really little that they were just as pleased with me cutting out a animal out of paper for them to play with as buying them an expensive stuffed animal.
I can never predict which oddball, crappy, plastic THING my 4-year-old will like. But I wholeheartedly agree with this list!
We had the cousins over for a few days, and one thing all 4 kids (ages 4, 5, 8 and 10) could do together was build with the wood train tracks. I recently bought a huge set of BRIO wood train pieces for about 80% off (which combined with the Thomas stuff we've been accumulating for years), and it was a huge hit. Can't think of much else that gets played with every day around here.
One thing I do with my kids now they are a little older Carrie, is to make them wait!
I know it sounds cruel but when a 'request' for a particular toy comes in, I say "fine, lets say yes and we'll go and get it on the XYth" (picking a date two to four weeks away, or a birthday/Christmas etc if it's a biggie)
99% of the time they forget all about it by then, phew!
We got something like that a year ago - it's called Hypercity - the box - at the first glance has got a logo that looks like Lego - but it is not. It its boring. Even our twins did not like it so we boxed it up again.
http://www.zwillingswelten.de/cms/2011/05/13/fluchtiger-spielspass-hypercity-mega-set-von-tomica/ (German)
It's true. You can make all kinds of rules for toys to buy/avoid, but the truth of the matter is, kids are human beings, human beings with a vast range of likes/dislikes. I've got four of em' and each one, EACH one has liked something entirely different than the next. My first loved books and only books UNTIL she could read on her own, then, she didn't want anything to do with books, or any other toy for that matter. Second had creativity off the charts and to this day only needs a ream of paper, scotch tape, scissors, and pencils. She'd be content to have much paper and many pencils til the end of time. Third played with parts of toys. Never the whole toy and never typical, really. She'd take parts of things that didn't seemingly go together, and play with them. It didn't pay to buy her a toy that needed the all the pieces to go together because after she got her hands on it, it would never work again because she'd lost various pieces. Fourth is all boy. A stereotype. He flocks to the toys with batteries at his friends house. Loves guns and shooting. Not too into classic wooden blocks but does have an imagination. So yeah, it's not a science, purchasing toys. You just never know.