Favorite types of toys for babies/toddlers

For Tots -
Dominoes Rock. They play with them for hours. They also like legos, those magnetic sticks with silver balls (don't know what they're called), and HOTWHEELS. Anything that gets their creativity working.

For Babies -
An old box, a sock, a pot or pan, the garbage...they like anything they can't have. They're especially thrilled if they can get hold of an ashtray. I noticed my last one was extremely attracted to the dog's tail.

But really, none of my babies were really interested in one particular toy over another. None of them kept their attention for long. The ones that worked best, were the ones that I could play WITH them.

The interaction (between baby and parent) toys will not only attract them and hold them, but they're better for both the baby and the parent. Mobiles seemed like a good idea, but only when I get down next to them and poke at the toys myself.

My son loves the toys that move and play music - like Tickle Me Elmo. He has a Spider-Man that sings Itsy, Bitsy Spider and the Spiderman theme.

His favorite toy(s) right now are the shake and go cars. He's got Lightning McQueen, Mater, Raoul, and the Sherriff from Cars. You shake them like crazy and set them on the floor, where they each have two sayings and then they zoom off across the floor. The distance depends on how long you shake it for.

He's also nuts about Matchbox cars - they go EVERYWHERE with us.

He also loves Legos, and basically anything that makes noise. When he was a baby, he liked car keys, pots, wooden spoons (to bang on the pots), pot lids (all of mine are now dented), paper towel tubes, toilet paper tubes - you name it, he was fascinated by it.

For babies: a Bunting Baby. It's a doll that anyone can make. Here's an especially simple example. And here's one ready-made. This is the kit I used the first time I made a doll. And believe me, I was not what you'd call "crafty." It's a soft round body of cotton or velvet stuffed with woolly wool and a simple head made of a ball of wool covered with cotton and a very simple face of two stitches for eyes and a stitch for the mouth. If Mom sleeps with it for a couple of weeks (like during the last weeks of pregnancy) baby finds it even more comforting.

I wish I had read this book while my children were small. I would have saved thousands of dollars, spared the world a mess of plastic trash, and done my kids a great service if I had stuck to these sorts of toys.

I don't believe they need any shiny plastic noisy things when they are small. But when they get to be 6 or so they care more about what their friends have. I do think you have to respect that too, so it's best not to be too dogmatic about anything.

My two oddball cents.

Babies:
- Anything that makes noise (rattles, car keys, empty plastic spice jar with beans or dried pasta)

- Anything tactile (I made my babies blankets with ribbons of various textures)

- Push toys, when learning to walk

- Things that they can tear apart or knock down (foam puzzles, towers of blocks)

- Board books, especially those with things to touch (like Pat The Bunny)

Toddlers:

- Still board books, but now more often those with lift-the-flap or pull out tabs. Any book with silly rhymes and pictures of 'Uh-ohs'! Both of my kids are very into books.

- Building materials (wooden blocks, legos, Stickle Bricks)

- Simple puzzles or toys where they have to make things fit together (puzzles, shape sorters, stacking rings)

- Pretend play toys, where they can imitate mommy or older sibling (small broom, pots and pans)

- Balls (rolling, bouncing, throwing, chasing)

You mentioned lovies, but I wouldn't classify those as 'toys', at least not in our home. Our kids both had lovies as toddlers (special teddy for my son, and a trio for my daughter of pink teddy, huge gray kitty and rattly stuffed giraffe, of which she had to have at least two), but only at bedtime. They didn't leave the house and weren't really played with during the day. I think that both of my kids viewed them as friends rather than toys.

Feel free to PM me for more info.

This is what I loved as a kid...

Baby
- Mobiles and other dangly things.
- Jingly things: Keys, coins, things I wasn't supposed to have.
- Soft toys

Toddler
- Contruction toys: Lego, wooden building blocks, stickle bricks.
- Toys that moved: Wind-up toys, robots, weebles. My favourite was a dog that you pulled back and he ran along waggling his ears.
- Loud toys: I had a wooden peg board. The pegs had to be hammered into holes, which was very noisy. I prefered the hammering over music boxes and the like.
- Soft toys
- Cars or anything else with wheels.

Things I wasn't keen on included balls and dolls. I was scared of jack-in-a-boxes.

A cardboard box for both, can't get them out of one once they are in it.

From my experience with several children and grandchildren, toddlers (< 3 yrs) love the boxes toys come in. Even older children like them, but larger ones like refrigerator cartons.

At one time, my-son-the-industrial-designer and I explored a set of nesting boxes as a commercial toy. We got hung up on a material that would be safe, durable, easy to fabricate, and still seem like a corrugated box. Eventually dropped the idea due to marketing difficulties. In other words, same problem as with small-press publishing.