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The Bottom of the Toy Box
Ideas for Toys With Staying Power
By Donna Smith
With pencil and paper in hand, you sit beside your birthday boy and watch as he hastily tears off the brightly-colored wrapping paper. He holds up the shiny metallic robot-looking thing with a hundred different colored buttons and a long antenna hanging out of its head. He yells, "Cool!" then quickly hands it to you and picks up another gift. As you write down the name of the child who gave the gift to your son, you make a mental bet with yourself on how long he'll play with it before it sinks to the bottom of the toy box with the other 17 robot-looking toys he has already. Two days? Three, tops.
Picking out a gift for a child can be a tedious job, especially if you don't know the child well. Many parents gravitate toward the "trendy" toys ingeniously placed at the front of the toy section at the store. Figures from the current hot movies, toys that light up, glow, walk, talk and have a million little pieces can be found here. Parents often forget that the simple, basic toys are the ones that are played with the most. Next time, walk past the trendy toys at the store and buy a gift with lasting appeal.
"I have a lot of children to buy for at Christmas," says Sherry. "One year I picked up some sturdy plastic buckets with handles for a dollar each. Over the course of a few months, I picked up crafty items at the dollar store -- pencils, crayons, markers, stickers, erasers, pipe cleaners, glue, sparkles, doodle pads -- and had a long line of baskets in the basement I slowly filled up. What a hit! And, each basket cost me around $10.00."