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What kid toys are you keeping?


mommyoffive
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wooden building blocks set that we have hundreds of in a huge storage crate.

Wooden train set.

Probably my son's tonka truck.

PRobably matchbox cars and my girls American Girl dolls and clothes.

MY dd's fairy figurines and my other dd;s horse figurines.Also, my dds sweet streets sets.

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I’m a grandparent fortunate enough to have grandchildren living close by.  I’ll tell you what I kept:  Duplos, legos, playmobile, Wooden train, wooden blocks, fischerteknik, American Girl, and a collection of random things that I loved.   So far, everything I’ve saved has gotten a tremendous amount of use.  Some of the things my grandchildren aren’t old enough for yet (fischerteknik), so we’ll see about those things.  Four things to help decide what to keep:  How much room you have, what did your children love, what did you love, what is most expensive to replace or might be unavailable in the future.

Anne

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Agreeing with the others---Legos, Duplos, Kinex, Brio (wooden train), wooden blocks, Matchbox & track, dressup clothes,  doll house furniture (from my mom's era).
We bought other building sets like Magnetix, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Zoobs . . . which didn't get a lot of use when the kids played with them, so I passed them to others.

But the surprise was the box of Corps Men.  These are small GIJoe-type jointed plastic action figures.
They're no longer sold, & our sons are glad they were saved.

Sorting thru kid BOOKS is an eternal project.  I only get rid of the ones that we never really liked.
And our dd always takes all of our castoffs.

YMMV.

 

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Duplos, a few special dolls and clothes, probably 200 little plastic people and animals, paper dolls, and Beanie Babies.  (I really have no deep love for the Beanie Babies, but thought they'd be fun to give to my grandchildren someday, maybe one each time they ended up spending the night here or something.  🙂 )

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We are keeping all Legos, Thomas Trains, Matchbox cars, Monster Trucks (like Matchbox), GeoTrax, and a Batman Imaginext Set (that has Batman, Joker, Penguin, etc. sets to go with it).  We have lots of room in our basement though.  We will see what we keep when we downsize, but that is at least 10 years away.

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I'm keeping a small box for each age grouping. For babies and small toddlers I kept my wooden toys.  For the preschool crowd I'm keeping Thomas trains and Playmobil.  I'm still sorting out my elementary box---legos for sure, and probably Barbies and AG dolls.  We have limited space, so it's what fits into IKEA Trofast bins. 

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2 hours ago, mommyoffive said:

 

Matchbox cars

Thomas the train trains and tracks 

My parents kept mine in an actual cardboard shoebox. I was basically allowed to keep a shoebox worth.

I didn’t keep most of my kids’ matchbox cars because of fear of the lead in the paint used. We had a few Thomas the tank engine trains recalled and replaced (https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/rc2-corp-recalls-various-thomas-friends-wooden-railway-toys-due-to-lead-poisoning).

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I have a box full of Little People that I've kept for many years which I pull out when we have little guests... always popular. 

We have very large tubs of lego.

My youngest has a few Thomas engines put away.

There is a castle and a lot of knights tucked away in the attic for someday and some Cars and Disney themed cars (my kids always got these in the Parks when they were little) ...

My youngest is 15 so this is all I think there is left. 

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Little People

American Girl dolls and clothes

Legos (we have some great sets: lots of Harry Potter, Medieval Village, a castle, house building set, plus my old legos for basic building)

Favorite stuffies

A few baby dolls

The Fisher Price doll house and furniture is up in the attic

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I am grandparent of 13, ages 1 year to 16.

I was stilling homeschooling and parenting when I became a grandparent. 

I still had legos, tinker toys, gears, wood puzzles, but no baby toys.

legos by far get the most attention. Gears are played with a fair amount. Everyone loved/loves the older wood puzzles their parents played with. A few were purchased on a field trip to a puzzle factory where the Judy Clock was made! Wish I had kept that.

i only have three girls, the rest are boys. Barbies, Carebears, cabbage patch dolls, etc had already been given to my daughters, so there is none of that here.

toys change, old tinker toys don’t play well with the new versions, so,we just recently donated those. Even Legos,change. Mine are all older, so very much lack of color as compared to new ones. Grands do enjoy playing with medieval set we bought when we were doing medieval history. And Star Wars stuff! Sheesh, keep all of that!

etch a sketch, another oldie but goodie. We had several electronic toys, speak and spell, a math one and a music one. The only one left is the music one. Noise makes me nuts, but grands love it. 

Baby and toddler toys were found at garage sales and as time went on. My oldest daughter donated many toys from her play room as her kids outgrew them.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Anne said:

I’m a grandparent fortunate enough to have grandchildren living close by.  I’ll tell you what I kept:  Duplos, legos, playmobile, Wooden train, wooden blocks, fischerteknik, American Girl, and a collection of random things that I loved.   So far, everything I’ve saved has gotten a tremendous amount of use.  Some of the things my grandchildren aren’t old enough for yet (fischerteknik), so we’ll see about those things.  Four things to help decide what to keep:  How much room you have, what did your children love, what did you love, what is most expensive to replace or might be unavailable in the future.

Anne

That is great to hear that you get use out of the toys.

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1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

My parents kept mine in an actual cardboard shoebox. I was basically allowed to keep a shoebox worth.

I didn’t keep most of my kids’ matchbox cars because of fear of the lead in the paint used. We had a few Thomas the tank engine trains recalled and replaced (https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/rc2-corp-recalls-various-thomas-friends-wooden-railway-toys-due-to-lead-poisoning).

Thanks I will look into this.

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We kept Legos,  Thomas trains and track, Playmobil, and American Girl dolls. And the dollhouse dh and I built for Dd when she was five.  The Plymobil and AG dolls were played with some, but the big hit has been the dollhouse. Mostly because middle grand loves to make things for it and youngest grand still loves to move things around and make up stories. But in the past year it’s the only toy of that any grand has touched.   I was shocked that none of them ever cared for the trains, and the playmobil phase was very short for them, where it lasted years with our kids.  We did pass down many of the books our kids had as kids, but I don’t consider those toys. 

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I kept some toys-- mainly Lego and Duplo (We have over 400 Duplo pieces!)  as well as a wooden train set.

I also kept LOTS of children's books-- DH wanted me to purge them a few years ago-- but now he is happy we didn't as we have our first grandchild living with us and even as a baby he LOVES books!

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Legos, some Fisher price, Playmobil, espeicllt the history ones, AG dolls/clothes, and some special stuffed friends. Having said that, we still had younger kids coming in regularly until March, so we tended to keep some toys for that reason. I finally put the remaining Legos ansPlaymobil up this Summer so I could take the unit they were in to my studio to hold individual music materials kits, on the realization that even if our clubs happen this fall, Iwoild not be comfortable with them happening in my house. We also have a box of care bears and lots of books.

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Two containers of picture books and favourite read-aloud books

Playmobil (very hard to get, and super expensive if available here)

Duplo

Lego.  Dh has about 5 sets that his mother saved for him too.

Collection of Schleich horses 

All of these have had good use already for visiting children.

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I love toys.  I had toys when I was single.  (My friends kids played when them when they came over.  And not coincidentally all those grown kids still call me Auntie.)

I use toys with my campers.  (I am the director of a small summer camp.)

Legos (huge favorite with my campers), Little People, plastic animals, American Girl dolls (but not for camp), art supplies, various small vehicles.  Puzzles.  Games.  Snap circuits (these are a huge favorite with my campers as well). 

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Legos, although I wouldn't say I'm keeping them as much the collection is still be added too.  The 22 year old brings home sets on a regular basis so I'm pretty sure he's not done with them yet.  The 19 year doesn't care for them so his collection has morphed into his older brother's collection.  By last count that I remember oldest collection is something like 250+ sets. Of course the boys could never share something they were actively playing with thier sisters so the girls had to create their own collection. And between 3 girls I know they have at least 50% of all the friends set ever made (or at least it feels that way).  But of course they couldn't share their legos with their younger brother so he had to create his own collection.  He's well on his way to imitating his oldest brother.  But this kid spends hours creating eloborate jungles and scenes so I can't complain about his collection because it is one of the very few things that engages him more than a few minutes.  So "I'm" not planning on keeping any of them because I fully expect that several of these children will be taking their collections (and any unclaimed ones of their siblings) with them.  

I'm keeping Thomas, Knex, and playmobil. 

Duplo is still around because youngest plays with that too.  I'd part with it but technically it's oldest DS's and he very well might want to hold onto that too.  Oldest DS has also saved every single box that his sets came in.  I was secretly glad that 2 boxes full of boxes got soaked when our sump pump failed last year because then he let me throw those away.  

Humorously my kids have no use for any of my favorite toys from my childhood (my "legos" were scorned because they were a knock off brand) and so after holding on to them for years, I finally let my toys go.

Edited by cjzimmer1
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What a fun thread!

Lego, but I’m not sure we will keep aaaallllllllll of it.  We have 28 years of kids with Lego.  There are literal floor to ceiling bins (in trofast drawer units, mounted) and two giant tubs of overflow.  I swear Lego enters one’s home and begins reproducing.

Playmobil.  Ditto.  I can’t see keeping all of it forever. Even though I deeply love it.  

Haba ball tracks.  Beloved.  And the blocks. All of those.

American Girl Dolls and some of the toys and accessories.  Not all of it!

Breyer horses - some of those were mine, the collection is pretty large now.

Schleich animals.

Fisherteknik sets and Snap Circuits will probably stick around.  These might get purged.

GeoTrax.  Of all the toys in our house, this is always the most loved by visiting kids.  We have even hosted play dates for neighborhood little boys, without our kids involved, because they came to the door asking to go to our playroom so often.  🤣

Some random things, probably.  Loved books, very good games, etc.  And I keep a bin of play food for visiting littles, that is usually a hit.

Wow.  That’s way too many.  Oops.


 

 

 

 


 

 

Edited by Spryte
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Legos, Thomas/Brio train stuff, DS's large collection of Schleich (and similar quality) prehistoric critters, a few stuffies (DS's teddy & killer whale, DD's now-stuffingless dog), and a ton of books. DD did not want to keep any of her dolls, doll house, or her really nice wooden barn and Breyer horses, so we gave those to friends.

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I purged long ago.  I kept a few special toys as family keepsakes.  The toys I kept just to have toys on hand for visitors are:

 

A decent selection of children's books

Thomas trains and track

Little People - people, buildings, animals, and vehicles

Board Games

Legos

Tinker Toys

Marble tracks

Hula Hoops

Erector set

 

With that selection we've been able to keep any little visitors happy for several days.

 

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On 7/6/2020 at 12:51 PM, Anne said:

Four things to help decide what to keep:  How much room you have, what did your children love, what did you love, what is most expensive to replace or might be unavailable in the future.

Great guiding points!

I loved that my grandparents saved some stuff for us to play with and that my parents saved some things for my kids, so I am probably saving too much. Also, my kids were very different from one another and didn't play with the same stuff, and both had some physical limitations or developmental things that made it hard to find toys they liked, so I hate to give up some of the things I had to work harder to find! If both of my boys played with something, it definitely stays because that indicates fairly wide appeal. I did purge many, many preschool toys.

Lego--I think I will be buying my kids Lego sets until I die, lol! I don't know if I'll be keeping these as much as they'll be keeping them.
Wooden/durable puzzles suitable for little ones
Little People (including some old sets from when I was a kid)
Imaginext
Geotrax
Safari figures--animals, knights and dragons, etc.
Brio tool set--like an erector set but wooden and for littler kids
Maybe some dress up stuff
Playdough molds that my kids really enjoyed (dentist, Cookie Monster, etc.)
Mr. Potato Head
Various kinds of wooden blocks
Small toys that work well in the car that were carefully collected (we have long drives to see family)--they don't take up much room, and it can be hard to find things for long trips

Too many books

Both my boys have sets of Hess trucks (regional item) that are really elaborate and fun. One played with his more than the other, but he still wants to keep them for now. Neither of my boys would let just any friend play with them--they had to know the other child playing with them would be respectful of them, which I thought was rather insightful from really young ages (like preschool).

We also have quite a few games that we'll likely keep.

One of the most played with items that my parents kept is Construx. Those are a huge hit! 

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