Y'all helped me out so much on the birthday party theme that I've come back to the well for more advice.

Toys/presents for kids: what toys have you given (or received, if it's not too long ago) that were a surprising success? I especially want to know the real shockers, the things you bought that you thought "yeah, the kid'll like it", but which ended up being the thing most played with in the long run.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Answers

I don't know if this qualifies, but last Easter, I took home 3 dozen Cascarones. (For those of you who don't know, they're confetti filled eggs. You smash them on people's heads. It's fun, I promise.) Anyway, so I took these home, and my whole family thought they were the funniest thing ever. We had a huge cascarone-smashing episode that lasted about 2 minutes. They're already begging me for more this year.

The other thing was a big-button calculator. My nephew became fascinated with calculating his allowance and sales tax and everything. It was weird.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

My mom got my 2 yr old son a radio controlled SNAKE for Christmas. It's got a remote and you can make it slither forwards and backwards. It's eyes turn red when it goes forward. He goes for that toy the minute we walk in every evening. Kind of creeped me out, but my son loves it. The batteries are already close to dead. Should I replace them? haha

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

My daughter is now four and has loved her MagnaDoodle (sp) since she was 2 1/2. I'm not sure if other kids will love it as much as she has. For Christmas this year she got a lot of Barbie stuff and, much to my dismay, she loves playing with them. I really didn't think she'd get that into them.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

The Barbie dogs. You know, the very snooty looking plastic dogs with the super-long hair and bendable legs? I *really* didn't want to buy one for my girlfriend's daughter, because I'm no friend to Barbie, but it just seemed like something she would love. And she did.

And it's not in the toy category, but kids sure love boots. The gaudier, the better. I've never seen a child reach for loafers or sneakers when there were cowboy boots around to wear. I think that is so cool, to see a 5 year old girl wearing madras shorts, a powerpuff girls t-shirt, and then these clunky, bright red cowboy boots. That, my friends, is total confidence in your fashion choices! We should all be so sure of ourselves!

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Walkie-talkies. When my son was in his Power Ranger phase, we bought some cheesey, cheapie PR walkie talkings, the kind that have only one earpiece and a boom microphone, so the kids just plop them on their heads and go. These things were used to death, repeated duct-tape surgeries kept them going until finally the electrical wires just gave up. I think we had those for about 4 years. We do a lot of camping, but the kids liked to use them in the house, made us wear them so they could talk to us while they were playing outside (annoying), used them as part of other game play. And they didn't even care that they were Power Ranger long after they had gotten disgusted with that craze.

Yo-yo's are really big at my son's school, that might just be a regional thing. They actually have "Yo-Yo Olympics" at his school during recess. And Silly Putty never loses it's charm.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

Oh god, the Barbie dog. Reading that hurtled me back to my own childhood, where my friend had the Barbie dog and I didn't. Oh, the coveting.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

the Techron cars you buy at Chevron stations are the best toy cars in the world. My son will be 5 tommorow, so he's had on of them for 4 years of daily play and it's still in great shape. They never break, they're a perfect size (too big to get lost, too small to be in the way) and the faces encourage social play instead of just vrooming them.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

I have a bunch of nieces and nephews ranging in age from 21 to 1. On the shorter end of the totem pole the little ones loved these $3.99 snap lock beads from Fisher Price or something. They are just this big beads with holes and plugs that you can connect. The little ones loved that. Then that fisher price thingie that had the balls that pop in a clear plastic dome when you roll it...that one is popular. For the pre-schoolers, they love/loved the Memory game. All those affordable. On a priceyer (sp?) side the Pluto dog that wags his tail and walks and barks, and fights for his bone was a hit this Christmas. I could go on since there are so many ages, but won't, except to say, my 15 year old nephew LOVED his i-zone polaroid camera.

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

My son is mad for his 'Hungry, Hungry, Hippo'. He kicks my ass every time.

He likes those plastic animals you get from the dollar section in Toys r Us. The horses and whales and dinos and tigers and the like. A bunch of those are always in his backpack.

Casey loves his marble game. It was kind of expensive, (50 bucks Canadian) but it comes with all these hollow plastic pieces that snap together, like lego, and you drop marbles from the top and watch them roll down the ramps and swirls and funnels. The structures you can make with this thing are only limited by your imagination. I call it the 'man game' because no man has ever come into my house and been able to resist playing with it. "Hey, what's that thing.........ker- plunk!"

-- Anonymous, January 31, 2001

As a kid, I used to habitually discard actual toys the moment I'd received them, and start playing with the box / wrapping paper / ribbon etc. My advice: forget the toy, give the kid a box.

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

A toy that I can't resist playing with for hours on end is a Big Box of Legos. Granted, it doesn't instantly have that first-impression 'cool' factor, they're not new by any stretch of the imagination, and they have lots of little pieces with sharp edges just perfect for swallowing and choking on, BUT.... man, I can have fun all day with those. I tried to buy a box online at Amazon.com at Christmas time and they were 'unavailable.' :-(

-- Anonymous, February 01, 2001

My kids love Playstation, because they are little screen addicts like me. My eight-year-old likes blank journals because he puts his own illustrated stories into them. I can't think of any particular toys that are super-fabulous to them, though. Maybe action figures. Hot wheels. Construction paper and scotch tape. That's about it. The rest lies in heaps in the toy box. Remote control cars are loved but only last a few days.

-- Anonymous, February 04, 2001