Dollar Store Toy Box

There are so many articles online about what things are good to buy and what things should be avoided at dollar stores. Dollar stores are popular because they’re great places to get certain products for less money than a name brand store.

It’s a common misconception that all brands are knock offs, but you can find name brand products for a dollar. Many of the bad products are knock off products with names sounding like familiar products, those products could be harmful.

Good Buys:

Top buys from the dollar store include cleaning supplies, such as soaps and detergents and kitchen items, such as mops and brooms.

Other products that are ok to buy are shampoos and other hair products. Some places carry name brands for less money.

Party supplies are great buys and much cheaper than name stores or party specialty stores. Party munchies can also be purchased for less at dollar stores. Name brand chips can be bought cheaper than regular stores and they’re still well within their expiry date.

Unsafe Buys:

Items that should be avoided with good cause include vitamins and electrical cords and equipment. Since you eat vitamins, knock off brands are poorly made and may not even contain the listed elements. Many electrical cords and components can get by without passing safety standards and can cause fires or other electrical mishaps.

Obviously there’s the problems with toys in regards to lead paint, choking hazards and strangulation problems, but they aren’t exclusive to dollar stores.

Batteries should also be avoided. Many are knock off brands and are known to leak, including batteries already included with toys. The mobile phone toy I got didn’t work and the batteries were plump and most likely ready to leak.

Be a Wary Dollar Store Shopper

In these bad economic times, more people are likely to flock to dollar stores to save money. It’s just a matter of knowing what is saving you money and what could cost you more in the end.

Basically, if a brand sounds familiar, but you think it might not be an actual brand, skip it until you can find out for sure and if the product can cause serious harm then you should reserve those buys for a regular store.

Read the entire channel 2 story here.

Posted on December 6th, 2008 by Mike
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The Toyz N Da Hood toy drive charity event is getting help from Soulja Boy. He is the Hip-hop artist with the hit song Crank Dat Soulja Boy. Toyz N Da Hood is in it’s 6th year now and Soulja Boy will be there to assist in hosting duties at the Old National Highway’s Walmart in Atlanta on December 19th. He will also help with the presents and even be signing some autographs and copies of his newest album “iSouljaBoyTellem“.

He’s quoted saying that he didn’t have much when he was a kid, so he knows what it’s like. Now he wants to help out and make a difference for kids. I think it’s great when artists get into those charity events because it’s a great way to rally support.

They’re also trying to increase donations by working together with the Kids with Strong Opinions to hold a toy drive at middle and high schools in Atlanta where the winning school will get a free concert with the top local hip-hop artists.

It would be interesting if many of the donated toys were Superman and Robocop toys. That would be awesome.

Read the entire Ace Showbiz article here.

Posted on December 4th, 2008 by Mike
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Good news for all you kids who are used to getting dollar or discount store toys for Christmas. According to Telegraph.co.uk, British parents are opting for the higher quality toys over the lower quality cheaper toys. This can be for any number of reasons, up to and including, all the toy recalls involving the cheaply made toys.

So, what toys might you get instead of the cheap dollar store toys?

Well, it seems that Lego is having a great year, same with Playmobil. Lego is on par to hit an annual sales record, despite a drop in overall toy sales. Lego has been around for a long time and since their toys are made in Europe, they have control of the overall safety standards instead of relying on standards of the country the toys are imported from.

Lego pieces are also much sturdier and don’t break easily. You’d have to take a hammer to them or something. Even stepping on them merely hurts the foot, not the piece. However, any and all Lego creations can break easily.

There are so many cool Lego sets available like Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman and Lego Star Wars, all of which have video games made about them, but other sets are available. For the boys, there are Sponge Bob Square Pants, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine sets while the girls would be interested in the Belville horse jumping Lego sets.

Lego sets are great since they can be made into many different things and it’s a chance to be creative. They can be disassembled and reconstructed, only limited by the number of pieces you have. Some people have thousands of pieces and make large, detailed Lego creations.

Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by Mike
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The 2008 holiday season is just around the corner and it’s time to start thinking about them. I usually wait till the last day to do everything. People say that I’m crazy, but it’s not as bad as it sounds if you know what you are going to get. If you are going that late just to search, then you’re in trouble.

I, for one, want to get somebody something they want, but they never know what they want. I am not much better, but it’s easy to put off shopping when you just don’t have the time to wander stores for hours aimlessly, hoping for something to catch your eye.

Yahoo has put together a list of 30 hot toys for kids of all ages, from babies to teens, and none of them are from dollar stores. Take a look at the list and see if any of the products on the list match anything on your child’s wish list.

Not all of them are toys in my opinion. Some of the products on that list are video games and some shouldn’t really be considered “toys”, but it’s a good list. The toy prices range from $6.95 to $399.99, the $399.99 toy is an electric scooter. The rest are more reasonably priced.

The Video Games
There are some good video game gift ideas that will be available for the holidays. For the PS3, the game Little Big Planet was just released after a short delay. I have to get this one. The Spore video game for the computer has been out for a little while with some DRM issues, but the monster creation is fun. The Wii has Wario Land Shake It which is supposed to be like the old style Mario Brothers games. With the success of Megaman 9 going back to the old NES style, we might be seeing more games like that instead of full 3D games that are much shorter.

The XBOX 360 has its own holiday offering with a game called Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise and for something not game console related, there’s the Smart Cycle Physical Learning Arcade. It’s an exercise cycle that plugs into your television so the child can get exercise, but they also learn stuff.

The Non Toys
Some of the items aren’t really toys to me. There are some book sets, the Harry Potter Hardcover Boxed Set and the 65 Years of Little Golden Books set. They also have some DVD sets of kid stuff, not really toys, like the Fraggle Rock complete first season and Team Baby Entertainment.

The weirdest thing I saw that they consider a toy was something called Air Fork One. It’s an airplane built around a fork that’s really meant for eating, not playing with. They also mention these safety ear buds, the Loud Enough Ear Buds, that lower the volume to prevent hearing loss.

The Likely Popular Toys
Star Wars toys are always popular and the LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon sounds like it will be a hit this year. It comes with 5,000 pieces and is about three feet long and two feet wide. Transformers are another popular toy with the live action movie this past year and there are deluxe Transformers movie figures available for all their favorites. The old generation Transformers were my favorite back in the day.

The Air Hogs Havoc Helicopters are radio-controlled helicopters that fire infrared lasers and the Snap Circuits SC-300 is an electronic circuit board learning tool with several projects to make, great for kids interested in electronics and components.

You can view the entire Yahoo Shopping article here, even if it’s just to find out what the Struwwelpeter is, one of the hottest toys.

Happy Shopping.

Posted on November 1st, 2008 by Mike
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Milk is a source of lots of vitamins and minerals. It’s great for baking, adding to coffee for people who need caffeine but don’t like the taste of coffee or for drowning your favorite cereal or oatmeal. It’s also good to add things to milk like chocolate or strawberry syrup. On milk cartons, you can find nutritional information, pictures of missing children and now, toy safety information and a website kids can go to for toy safety information.

The Tory Record reports over 1.5 million half-pint milk containers now have safety information about toys. With all the toys that have been recalled, there’s a good chance some are still around. Even with all the internet buzz and news reports, some people might still have those toys. It’s another way to promote awareness about dangerous and potentially dangerous toys.

They know it’s a slim chance that kids will actually visit the websites, but it might promote discussion with parents and they hope it gets kids drinking more milk. They’re also hoping to add that information to bigger cartons and other brands to broaden the awareness. The advertising already done is covered by the state so, for now, the cost looks like it won’t be going up.

Read the full story here.

It sounds like a neat idea, although it seems to be more worthwhile for parents than the kids. If they want to make it more interesting to kids, they should make them collectible cards you get off the milk cartons. The Recalled Toys collectible cards and subsequent card game associated with it, like they do with other cards. Games like the Yu-Gi-Oh monster card game. Now that would be something to see.

Recalled Toy Monsters:
“I play the Nerf Blaster +1 card and attack your toy speed boat.”

See, who says you can’t have fun with recalled toys?

Posted on October 26th, 2008 by Mike
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Well I guess it was only a matter of time with all the problems causing toy recalls. According to the BBC, a large portion of the toy exporters in China have gone out of business. Safety issues with the exported toys has lowered the demand in addition to a stronger Chinese economy and higher safety standards have all played a part in the industries closures.

A whopping 3,631 exporters, more than 50% of the businesses, were shut down due to those factors. Most of those businesses were the smaller establishments who were unable to handle the massive recalls. The larger exporters, who were able to withstand the recalls, were told to comply with the safety regulations.

Read the full story here.

It’s too bad it had to come to that. I’m sure there was a large demand to get all those toys out to the store, but they just weren’t safe.

I remember starting to collect items for the website just before the first batch of recalls. I was wondering how that was going to affect the website. Some of the toys are actually decent for the price, although I couldn’t help but wonder which painted ones may actually be coated in lead paint. Lead paint was used on the toys because it made the toys shinier and kids like shiny things. I just figured the worst, all were potential hazards!

I’m sure the toys will be back once they get things sorted out over there, but will people be willing to buy the toys? I mean, other than me for this site.

Posted on October 20th, 2008 by Mike
Filed under: Toy News | 1 Comment »

Wal-Mart is getting the jump on the Christmas shopping competition early this year, the Wall Street Journal reports. It’s no surprise that Wal-Mart makes up over one quarter of toy sales and they want to keep it that way. They plan on luring customers to their store by cutting the price of ten familiar toys and selling them for ten dollars. I can just see the advertisement now, “Ten for Ten Toys”.
Read more…

Posted on October 11th, 2008 by Mike
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