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If you’ve ever fought crowds to get a coveted toy, you know that early October is actually the perfect time for parents to start holiday shopping. Amazon knows this, which is why they’re holding a second Prime Day sale event today and tomorrow, featuring great Prime Day toy deals. You can find the best Prime Day deals here. But if your kids are like my kids, they’re already working on their bucket lists. If you say you haven’t started budgeting yet, you’re either lying, you’re financially irresponsible, or your kids are much less demanding than mine (I know, it’s my fault).
We test and write about toys all year round, comparing our own recommendations and then using price tracking software to make sure what we recommend is actually a good deal. These are all toys that we and our children have tried and loved. You need an Amazon Prime membership to get the Prime Day deal price, but you can sign up for a free trial and Prime offers plenty of perks.
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Toy Deals
Photography: Amazonas
Magna-Tiles is one of the best ROI toys I’ve ever purchased for my kids (and one of my consistent recommendations for the best stem toys). Click together on the translucent tiles to create 2D or 3D shapes. Once they’ve made each set, the tiles simply go into a bin to be turned into farms, zoos, and God knows what else in the years to come.
Prime Days are always the best time to stock up on Lego sets because the company usually runs a lot of promotions with around 30 percent off. These bricks are amazing but also expensive (the tolerances are so precise!), so try not to buy them at full price, if possible. This is a great price for a basic box of colors. However, if you want to work on a kit, you have a few more options.
There’s no point in saving a few bucks on a cheap Lego set when you can save over 20 bucks on something. much bigger and more exciting! Star Wars is very popular in my house right now and I’m considering this as a family holiday gift. The large figure is adjustable and even comes with a matching minifigure to include with your other Star Wars sets.
Photography: Particles
If you have a child who gets frustrated easily, I can’t recommend the GoCube enough (in fact, I recommended it in our Smart STEM Toy Gift Guide). A regular Rubik’s Cube leaves you alone to wallow in your own incompetence, but a Bluetooth-connected Rubik’s Cube has bright edges and a beautiful app that tells you how to solve one. Once you’ve done that, you can learn all the different algorithms to reduce your solving time and even compete with friends. This price is for the gift package with the charging stand, cable, and carrying bag so your child can even play with it on the car ride home.
This 3D puzzle is one of the best analog gifts. Once completed, the puzzle can be opened 180 degrees to reveal the detailed interior. There are 293 pieces, which should give you a nice long break from screens. If Notre Dame isn’t your favorite beautiful building, there are plenty of other options to choose from, all with overall positive Amazon reviews. —Louryn Strampe
Photography: Yoto
Several friends purchased Yoto Player (7/10, WIRED recommends) so their kids can play media without having to interact with a screen. The illuminated pixel clock is cute, so it can sit on a nightstand and tell the kids when to get up, and you can play audiobooks with insert cards (you can even create your own content with blank cards). the smallest Yoto Mini ($55) It is also for sale.
This soft kids speaker is ideal for toddlers ages 3 to 7 because it can withstand drops, spills, and other mishaps. You get five character figures with the speaker (including Spider-Man and Playtime Puppy) and when placed on top, they activate related songs or stories. The content is usually less than an hour, sometimes much shorter, but you can purchase additional characters for all types of content, including Paddington Bear, Disney and Pixar movies. —Simon Hill
My kids spent about three or four years totally obsessed with kinetic sand, which is a nice return on investment for an affordable stocking filler. As my colleague Simon Hill (who has similarly obsessed children) points out, kinetic sand behaves like wet sand, except it looks, feels and smells good and isn’t wet. With the exception that you will have to limit it to a table or play area and/or invest in a robot vacuum cleaner, your child will be able to mold and shape it to their liking.
Photography: Simon Hill
I’m a big kid and this is one of the best Star Wars gifts I’ve ever received, but any fan will love it. These helmets look good enough to satisfy collectors, but they are much cheaper than high end movie replicasso your children can play with them. It looks like Amazon has discounts on a lot of other Black Series helmets, including the Scout Trooper ($72) and The Mandalorian ($70). —Simon Hill
This clever logic puzzle challenges you to fit Tetris pieces onto a three-dimensional puzzle board. With 100 3D puzzles that require spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills to overcome, this will keep kids ages 8 and up busy for quite some time. They get harder as you go, but never too difficult. Maker Educational Insights offers a number of other brain-stimulating puzzles specifically for younger children, including canoodle genius (also for sale). —Simon Hill
Game offers
Photography: Simon Hill
If you have sensitive children who simply don’t do well when competing directly with each other, then you may have more success with cooperative play. Here, up to five players work together to defeat a rotating cast of monsters from classic movies, including Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein, to save the town, the villagers, and yourselves. I’ll probably buy this for Halloween for when my kids run out of trick-or-treating (hello, PNW). See more family board games here.
Originally called Settlers of CatanThis immersive strategy game involves collecting and trading resources to build roads, settlements, and cities on a randomly generated hexagonal tile board. Accumulating enough points for a victory requires the right strategy and some luck with dice rolls. My kids love the trade and thief mechanic, which allows you to steal cards from your opponents and lock their resources (although it can lead to fights). The game is perfect for three or four players and usually lasts about an hour. There are several expansions and a new version called Catan: new energies (7/10, WIRED recommends) if you ever want more. —simon hill
If you just can’t get enough of Catan (formerly known as Settlers of Catan) and now your kids want to join in, there’s now a junior version for kids up to 5 years old. Your intrepid kindergartner can learn to trade with—and steal from—people by playing as miniature pirates on the high seas. They will also learn to argue. A lot.
You must decorate the royal palace of the king of Portugal with colorful decorative tiles, inspired by the Moorish designs of the Alhambra palace in southern Spain. Choose tiles each round to fill your game board, but plan carefully for high-scoring sets and patterns. Like many of the best family board games, it’s quick to learn but has real strategic depth. —simon hill
Photography: Clixo
This irresistible building kit was featured in our guide to the best STEM toys and makes a fantastic gift for kids of all ages. Clixo’s magnetic, colorful and versatile pieces snap together, allowing you to build all kinds of three-dimensional shapes, from wreaths to cats. The pieces stack neatly and are very compact when stored. They are also durable and washable, and you can play with them anywhere; You don’t need a table. Clixo kits are suitable for children ages 4 and up, but teenagers and even adults will enjoy them too. —Simon Hill
One of the best family board games for toddlers, Labyrinth is simple enough for anyone to understand. The game board is a maze and your challenge is to collect a set of treasures determined by the cards you are dealt. This game was designed by a German psychologist and the fun comes from the ability to change the maze by pushing one tile on the board, which displaces another each turn. You can create a route for yourself, but it’s also worth thinking about how to block your opponents, and the best moves do both. —Simon Hill
If your kids also love playing on the Nintendo Switch, it’s a good idea to have a case when they carry it around. We like this one because it’s affordable and has extra pockets for a controller or extra cables and a case for game cartridges. It also comes in a wide variety of fun colors.
Photography: Amazonas; fake images
If your child loves cleaning like mine and begs you to let them use the broom twice their size, this set from Melissa & Doug can make cleaning up after dinner a lot easier by giving them a set their size. Includes a miniature broom, mop, duster, hand broom, dustpan and stand to hold all of these handy cleaning toys. They really work: When my son decides he still absolutely needs the full-size broom, I borrow his set to do the job.
Get kids involved in art and sculpture early with this molding and baking polymer clay set. Includes 57 different colors for them to play with and opens up a world of creativity for your children. WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson says the things his kids built with this set didn’t always work, but that’s not a bad thing: it’s just part of the learning process.
Calling my two-year-old a high-energy kid is an understatement. However, I have managed to receive praise for his good behavior, and it is always because he has a sticker book. These reusable sticker books from Melissa & Doug are my go-to for entertaining my son or his friends at a restaurant, in the doctor’s waiting room, or even just on a lazy Sunday morning at home.