Favourite Toys Games

The best toys for kids are ones that are both entertaining and educational. This is a list of favourite toys and games that are sure to become favourite toys for your kids too. You can spend a lot of money on toys that just don't engage your kids or that all their friends already have. What's special about this list is that it combines classic favourites along with toys that are special, different and a real surprise! The response and reward you get from giving something that's a bit unique is fabulous and makes every dollar worthwhile. For the kids they have something their friends probably don't have without necessarily being an expensive item.
All of these favourite toys are available to buy online and many are items you won't find in your average toy store.

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12 Classic Toys

When a favourite toy or game from your own childhood is still around its a sure sign that its a classic and will bring as much joy to your children as it did to you as a child. Check out this list of 12 childhood favourite toys or today's close equivalents. Click on the images for pricing and more details.

1. Pound a Peg

2. Tonka Steel Classics

3. Barbie with ambition

4. Thomas & friends

This is part of a collection of classic wooden toys under the Melissa & Doug brand.

Many Tonka toys are now made of plastic but their "classics" range are of sturdy steel.

Seek out Barbie's "I can be" series showing her in a range of careers rather than princess dresses.

Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends are still as popular as ever. There are great track sets or favourite characters to buy.

5. Tea Set

6. The Game of Life

7. Beetle

8. Spirograph

For generations kids have been making cups of tea for themselves, their dolls and their friends

Choose your career carefully and see what fate blows your way.

This fun game for littlies was known as "Creepy Critters" when I was a kid.

Lots of fun creating patterns on paper.

9. Classic Lego

10. Weebles

Playskool Weebles Rock 'n Wobble Playground Playset

11. Mastermind

12. Play Doh Sets

A colourful, classic toy for endless fun over several years. Boxes of Lego are best value for money and inspire creativity. Click for more options.

The Weebles are still wobbling and not falling down.

It's the code-breaking game re-styled with slide indicators for correct colour and placement instead of fiddly pins. Fantastic!

Shaping and moulding Play Doh can become addictive. Now there are so many different sets available to amuse for hours.

Speed Monopoly - Card Game

This card game is a new take on the classic board game that is much quicker and just as much fun. In Monopoly Deal the aim is to collect a monopoly of three different property series. There are Wild Cards and "Forced Deal" cards to keep it all fast-paced, changeable and fun. Be warned it is an addictive twist on an old favourite and takes about 15 minutes for a game instead of 3 hours!

Origami Aeroplanes

Kids have great fun folding these pre-printed double-sided paper planes. The pack contains 16 planes at a cost of less than $1.25 each. It's great entertainment making them and then seeing which design flies best and longest.

Fur Real Friends

Fur Real has a cute selection of delightfully motorised furry friends for your children to interact with.
The range available includes are cats, kittens, puppies, a guinea pig, bunny, a panda cub, penguin and even a bear cub. They need attention and love to “snuggle” more than anything!

Stomp for Rocketing Good Fun

Super High Performance Stomp Rocket Refill

Stomp Rocket is a fantastic toy for kids! These are air propelled rockets for kids (or adults) where stomping on the launch pad creates a air blast that sends the "nerf-like" rocket up to 400 feet in the air. The bigger the stomp (weight assists with this one) the further they go. Best for parks really or they may end up on your neighbour's roof. Fabulous affordable fun.
The original "Stomp Rocket" is available from IQ Toys or Fishpond with Fishpond also having replacement rockets. Both sites also have similar systems from other toy manufacturers like "Jump Rockets" and "Air-Hogs Heli-blasters".

www.fishpond.co.nz

Air Hogs Vectron Wave Flies without a Remote Control

The Vectron Wave is a cool new favourite toy that hovers above objects. It has some sort of sensor that detects objects and floats above them.
Click on the YouTube video to see it in action.
I've never seem them in the toy stores but you can check them out and buy them on-line from IQ Toys. Click on the IQ Toys link on the right for more details or to buy this new favourite toy online.

Domino Train Set

These days there aren't too many kids that play dominoes but all kids (young and old) love setting things up just to knock them down.
This Domino Set has a train that chugs along placing the dominoes at the perfect spacing to fall down in sequence. The battery-operated train can be steered to lay twists and turns and comes with 200 coloured dominoes (without spots) as well as a few marble race mazes to add further interest.
It's great fun to set up for younger kids while 9-12 year olds will still get the thrill of making their own track. The Domino Train set is available from the Fishpond website and was $34.99 at the time of writing. Click on the image for more details or to buy this and other favourite toys online.

Hyper Dash - Go Kids Go!

Hyper Dash The Target Tagging Race Course Game - New Extreme Edition

It's always great to see you kids active and now there's an electronic toy that really gets them moving.
Hyper Dash has an electronic baton five electronic coloured bases. The game involves racing around following the electronic instructions from one base to another - trying to score the fastest time.
The targets can be positioned over an area as large as a football field or as small as a lounge rug or a table top.
We've played it in parks, on the front lawn and even in our lounge on a wet day. It's a great game to get young and old racing around and can be used to help young ones learn their colours. There are a range of different games to choose from including one called "Micro Dash" which is a bit like the "Simon" electronic memory game that you can play on a table top or mat. All of the games are designed to get progressively harder as you go on.

We love this game, just make sure you collect the bases all in from outside so the dew or rain doesn't affect the electronics.
You can buy Hyper Dash on-line from IQ Toys and Fishpond.

Lego Create & Educate

By far the best toy I ever bought my kids was a Lego create bucket. With hundreds of pieces and a manual to guide them to make 50+ different vehicles - they played with it for hours and hours. Following the maps keeps kids focused and entertained and once one vehicle is made and proudly paraded around - they can break it down and make something new either from the book or from their own imagination.
The very addictive - Lego City, Star Wars, Power Miners, etc - create the same enthusiasm for the build, and some are very complex, but once built the models tend to be put on display on a shelf. Instead of being creative (both architect and engineer) kids become builders and the passion for creativity became a passion to acquire the full series. It may be more profitable for Lego but its less enriching for the children.

Seek out the Lego starter sets, "tubs" or "boxes" of Lego - they are so much better value for money and an investment in your children's education & imagination. Click on the images below for details and prices of these Lego sets and games.

Barbie "I Can Be" Dolls and Playsets

Barbie is a classic favourite toys for generations and now Barbie have a range of dolls that play to the aspirations of little girls be that as a ballarina, doctor, pet or zoo vet, a snow boarder, babysitter, chef, rock star, dentist, rally driver or life guard.
It's great to move little girls out of the princess syndrome and into more realistic role playing. There are a number of dolls available as well as some more complex play-sets with accessories.

Beware of the Echobot!

This one is as much a toy for adults as children and has raised lots of giggles since its arrived in our house.
The Echobot is a little one-eyed monster that can record a ten second voice message that plays whenever someone passes within a metre of it. With three suction cups can be stuck to walls, doors, fridges and can be used for trick messages or can be a handy message centre.
"Boo! What are you up to?!!" "Leave the chocolate alone!" "Honey I've gone shopping with the kids."
As far as I can tell you can only buy the Echobot from www.iwantthat.co.nz although occasionally they also pop up on Trade Me.

Get Chatting!

If you could have any round object in the world, what would you choose?
Which musical instrument would best describe your personality?
If you could be one inch tall for a day, what specific place would you most like to explore?

Never before has it been so much fun for kids to put on their thinking caps! Chat Pack for Kids contains 156 cards, each one featuring a question guaranteed to get creative juices flowing and great conversations going. Simply pull out any card from the small plastic box and let the big-time fun begin! Ideal for trips, mealtime, bedtime/sleepovers, family gatherings, classroom activities, or just having fun with friends! Hinged plastic box contains 156 stylised cards.

Chat Pack for Kids: Creative Questions to Ignite the Imagination

click on the image for more details or to buy this game online.

Magnetic Dress-Ups

The cardboard dolls with their paper dresses have becme more resilient with these wooden, magnetic dolls. There is quite a selection available including ballerinas, princesses and every day friends like "Abby & Emma" shown right. There are also magnetic dress-ups for boys with firemen and superheroes.

Click on the images to see more detail or to buy this cute activity for kids online.

Newton's Cradle

A classic item developed in the 1960's and named after Isaac Newton because it
demonstrates one of his laws. Considered by most an executive toy but kids love
Newton's Cradle as well.

Not widely available in shops, you can buy it on-line - click on the image for details

Go Bananas

This is a bit like speed scrabble without the board.
The aim is build your own personal scrabble structure using your letters. As soon as one person has fitted all their letters into connecting words they shout "Peel" and all the players have to grab two more letters and find a way to fit them in too. Sometime the only way to progress is to break down big sections of your existing structure to make the new letters fit. Great fun for all the family since the size of the words doesn't matter.

The Game of Life

If you want to give your kids a hint of Life's trials and tribulations while also working on their numeracy then Life is a great game.

Do they go to college or not, salary envy, getting married and having kids plus all the unexpected costs and windfalls life throws at us. He who finishes with the most money wins - not really a good completely the right life message - but then life experieneces get converted into money as an equaliser too. Lots of fun and a classic family game.

Beetle

When I grew up our version of this game was called "Creepy Critters". The new version is called Beetle and is a little less creepy and great fun for young children as they race to be first to build their beetle by spinning the parts they need on the dial.
Each child has their own leaf to assemble the beetle on using bright fun coloured beetle body parts and its suitable for younger children but not too little because it has lots of small parts.
For more detail or to buy online, click on the image.