Plastic Toys: love 'em or hate 'em?

[Saffron]

Plastics: Love 'em or hate 'em?

AND

What do you do with the plastic ones when they break (not widely able to recycle?)... especially the ones with lots of electrical bits inside them?!!

Husband hates plastic toys that sing and dance. We've tried to keep them to a minimum (and have mainly pre-loved plastics where we can), but more and more the plastics are creeping into our house.

As Little Saff grows into the preschool years, I'm finding (1) the selection of wooden/traditional toys available is becoming smaller compared to baby toys, and (2) wooden/traditional toys are fecking expensive compared to plastic.

Plastic toys, or traditional wooden/metal? What do you have? What do your children like?

[Medusa]

It's the toy equivalent of jam doughnut versus organic, sugarfree muffin. Parents lovingly prepare the latter while the ungrateful sprogs lunge lustily for the former.

[GinaG3]

One of my biggest hatreds is plastic toys. My daughter likes wooden toys, but a have a niggle a lot of people think she's missing out (she really isn't) and her room is full to the rafters with plastic junk. Honestly! Every Christmas, I try and buy the most sustainable, nice looking, hard wearing toys but then we get bombarded with pink plastic (even more of a hate!)

She has a John Lewis wooden kitchen with every single item you can think to go in it, wooden of course. She tells me she requires a wooden washing machine and a wooden kettle this year for Christmas. We also have, easel, writing desk, brio train set and hand crafted wooden farm (both were mine as a child and have been in the family through nieces etc for the last 15 years plus and still going strong), racing mice, red bus with people, cash register, and various other pieces including these which are absolutely brilliant she doesn't stop playing with them http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/251110460301?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&cbt=y

We also have things like porcelain tea sets amongst one of the most played with things ever, a huge wigwam in funky prints in her room, ride on rocker (now outgrown).

All are wooden but modern. I'm drawn to striking design.

[Otta]

Wooden toys are lovely, and more like pieces of art, but I do think there is quite a snobbery about them.

We have both, and a couple of musical plastic toys are smash hits (Mozart magic cube is great IMO). Admittedly there are some God awful noisy toys with very happy American voices telling us "that's great!!!", but those just tend to go to a Charity shop as soon as the buyer has seen a photo of smiling child playing with it.

[cashewnut]

I can't stand them. So far we don't have any, but every time we go round to play somewhere else the little one crawls over to the loudest brightest plastic toy and prods and pokes and flaps with glee. Remote controls are even more exciting though.

[snowboarder]

But duplo? and lego? They're good.

We have both - brio railway especially goes down well, and eldest (3) is really loving his duplo knight's castle. And cars - plastic and metal and wooden varieties. But basically there's nothing more fun that other children's toys. Even when they are the same as your own but in a different environment....

[Saffron]

Oh, yes, we love Duplo here too! Definitely encountered wooden toy snobs (which is different than just being annoyed by certain plastics)...not nice... however... I do love that most traditional toys can be easily repaired or recycled. What do I do with broken plastic/electronic toys? Does the WEEE directive come into this?

AND how can we gently persuade people to give traditional toys, instead of buying our daughter plastic rubbish? (Although I'm guilty of this too... just bought her a plastic shark from London Aquarium. Didn't see any traditional toys suitable to her age in the gift shop, and Sharky was only ?1... *embarrassed face*).

Must say also that party bags, whilst lovely, have been some of the worst offenders for plastic rubbish, even from our "green" friends!

[snowboarder]

Yep - Party bags and the 'free' gifts in the childrens magazines I am begged to buy whenever we go into a supermarket!

[Saffron]

Hmm, small business opportunity: Providing "green" toys for the magazine industry? But probably costs a fortune... plastics just so damn cheap.

But if it's a choice between platic kids' mags or chocs/chips, which do you go for??? I always try to steer Little Saff towards bright shiny fruit, though sometimes I'm defeated! *hangs head in shame*

[Jo'sEnglish]

I prefer wooden toys because they are more sustainable and seem to last better. But my son is not yet one so I'm sure when he can start asking for toys things might change! I try and only get wooden toys for him if I buy them as I know we will get plastic ones as gifts. Luckliy we both have parents that think similarly to us and most of our friends are the same so we don't end up with too many plastic ones. You would think if people saw you mostly had traditional toys they would reaslise that is what you prefer but I don't think you can ever completely stop people buying rubbish!

Overall, I don't think kids need that many toys and a few nice ones are better than a whole heap of cheap ones that break after 5 minutes.

And we will definitely be getting lego when he is older (mostly so his Dad can play with it I suspect!)

I feel like electronic toys should be covered under the WEEE directive?

[oimissus]

as long as it keeps Miss Oi occupied and seems to have some kind of developmental/educational merit, however miniscule, I don't care what it's made of! Don't see why people automatically brand plastic toys as rubbish, she's got some lovely stuff - all her little people and animals are plastic and she loves them the most. And nothing has broken yet, though she's not too heavy handed (yet!).

[Sanne Panne]

Battery operated noisy toys drive us totally nuts so we don't have any of those (and when our kids get their hands on one elsewhere they are in heaven). We do have playmobil and duplo and a few more basic plastics like a bus and and oven. Our kids (2 and 4) never spend a long time playing with any toy except sometimes duplo. They end up spending half an hour turning chairs into slides and suffocating dolls with plasters, ignoring the good as well as the crap toys completely. We've pretty much stopped buying toys as they don't seem to provide lasting entertainment. Maybe we just have the wrong toys....

[Jo'sEnglish]

Just to clarify - I don't think all plastic toys are rubbish, far from it. Just that most of the rubbish ones tend to be made of plastic (does that make sense?!?)

[gillandjoe]

I agree with everything stated so far and would also like to add an ungrateful gripe about being given stuffed animal toys as gifts - what exactly is a baby supposed to do with them?!

I'm anti plastic toys for green reasons too but also because when I was a little girl I absolutely loved the weight and feel of metal and wood objects - they felt magical and important. I think it may be good to limit the amount of toys and instead encourage imaginative play with adult objects. Not sure about this though in safety/practicality terms of course!

[cornelia]

Love Duplo, hate anything with batteries... but it's early days yet.

[nunheadmum]

Wooden toys cost more to make so they need to appeal on longevity or some kind of beauty / value in how they are constructed. Well constructed plastic toys with a real play value are just as good. Unfortunately the cheapness of plastic means that it's easy to make cheap, tacky toys with it that wouldn't get made in wood.

Whizzy, noisy, sparkly toys will attract kids attention short term, no matter what they're made of. But the toys that last will engage their minds more and be less prescriptive in what you do with them. That's in the design of the toys, not what they're made of.

On one hand I loathe the tat that comes with magazines / party bags. But I have a bag of it that the kids tip out every time they have a 'at home' day and I have to say, it's earned its place.

I'd love all my kids toys to be beautiful and add to the aesthetic (ahem??) value of my home. But at the end of the day, I'm more concerned that the kids enjoy the toys and they help them to develop and somehow I think that'll always win out. Probably just as well really or they'd put the rest of my house contents to shame!!

I'm probably less concerned with what they're made of than just how many of the darned things we seem to have. I don't think I buy that many but they seem to multiply every time I turn my back......usually over the floor I've just tidied!!

[nunheadmum]

Have to add - my kids are 6 & 4 and I think your reaction does change/mellow as they get older. I would have loved to say wooden / traditional toys only but you give in to the inevitable!!

And yes, gilland joe, stuffed toys!! So supersweet that you feel awful if you try and get rid of any (and TOTALLY impossible with 2 girls!!) but my house is being taken over by them!!!!!

[JessM]

I wonder how the VTech people sleep at night!

I'm not plastic snob but their toys are just irritating beyond belief!

ELC happyLand stuff on the other hand is great IMO

Just cos a toy "talks" doesn't mean it's educational!

[hpsaucey]

Playmobil rocks! Nuf said....

[veryseriousgirl]

Our main criteria for toys is that they don't seem like they'll break into pieces and they don't specify how they're supposed to be played with (V-tech really fails on this one!). The WOW plastic toys are great and my daughter has all sorts of imaginative play with them (some of her overheard instructions to the toys are hilarious) and they're very sturdy. We also mix and match sometimes - my stepmother gave my daughter a real plastic-fantastic pink dollhouse but we've introduced some wooden furniture when I've bought additions to it.

[hpsaucey]

We have a real mixture of stuff. Same criteria as veryseriousgirl - hopefully well made and not too prescriptive on play and imagination. Wow toys are great! Do love Lego but so many of the pieces are so specialised that my boys struggle to imaginatively use them in other ways sometimes. At least with well-made ones you can pass them on...There's also some recycled plastic stuff out there. And I dream of buying the whole of the Myriad Toys catalogue....

[Jo'sEnglish]

gillandjoe - not sure how old your baby is but maybe you should make a treasure basket http://www.theimaginationtree.com/search/label/Treasure%20Baskets . It's my baby's favourite thing. You just have to make sure they don't get left alone with them. Weirdly, he also loves his soft toys, he likes to wrestle them!

[Otta]

My daughter loves her soft toys, they live in a tent in the corner of the room, and she sits in there chatting away, and making up games with them.

[oimissus]

Miss Oi ignored her soft toys as a baby but got more into them as she got older, she chats to a selection in bed and always has some in the car or pram with her.

[Convex]

I'm not too bothered about plastic vs wooden toys, if the boy likes it he will play with it etc etc. I'm a bit taken aback by the size of some toys but I suppose all will become clear as he gets older.

Eg we have both a plastic vtech walker and a proper wooden trolley style one and he plays with them both in different ways (not walking yet!)

I do get tired of hearing the same sound effects and voice recordings coming out of different toys, a bit lazy from the manufacturers I think! And I now hum toy songs instead of pop songs, oh well.