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E: 30/6 Find the Best Toys Ever and win £50 of John Lewis vouchers

http://www.eparenting.co.uk/surveys/best_toys_ever_survey.shtml


Complete a survey to help Gogoblin.co.uk find the Best Toys Ever and win £50 of John Lewis vouchers

Gogoblin.co.uk is an online wishlist website just for children. So we make it our business to know what children really play with and what make the very best presents for children. We have been conducting a survey to find out what your children’s absolute No. 1 playthings are. We asked parents to name the one favourite toy for each of their children and this is a summary of what we learned…

0-5 Year Olds
It is no surprise that the children in this age group love their soft toys and blankets. 27% of parents said that their daughter’s cuddly was the number 1 as against only 15% of the boys.

As they grow up the boys like their cars and trains best. This peaks at aged 2 with 46% dropping to only 38% of 3 year olds. The most popular toys for girls in this age group are their dolls and dolly accessories (33% of all girls in this group)

In the 2–4 age range characters are very important. Parents who responded to the survey didn’t specify train alone but “Thomas” or “Henry” (46% of of 4 year old boys). For the girls, their preferred characters are Dora, Fifi and Minnie Mouse. Action figures are also very popular among 4 year old boys (38%).

Even as young as 4 our boys are beginning to take an interest in games consoles and electronic games. In our sample 19% of them are already well into their Gameboy, PS2 and Xbox. But none of the girls under 5 liked electronic games better than their dolls.

5-8 Year Olds
Now the girls start to take an interest in electronic games: a handful (7%) of 5 and 6 year old girls are devoted to their electronics. But by 7 the Nintendo DS is the no 1 toy of almost half the girls.

Amongst 5 year old boys the Nintendo DS is the favourite but with the older boys the PSP and PS2 are more popular.

By 5 the boys have pretty much lost interest in soft toys, but the girls still love them, peaking at age 5 (43%). This drops to 27% of 6 year old girls loving their soft toys best and down to almost none at age 8.

Sports items (mainly footballs and football kit) first appear on the lists for 7 year old boys.

9-12 Year Olds
In this age group a fifth of all the boys put highest value on sports equipment but only 3% of girls.

Amongst the 9-12s interest in games consoles remains high with 47% of boys and 55% of girls.

Dr Who characters are very popular with boys but there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for girls. In this age group the girls enjoy their clothes and accessories, their iPods, MP3 players and mobile phones.

13-16 Year Olds
And once they hit 13, games consoles Xbox, PSP, PS2/3, Wii – (though no longer the Nintendo DS) are extremely popular along with laptops, mobile phones and iPods. .

I don’t think there are any great surprises here; just confirmation of a few assumptions we make when choosing a gift for a child:

A soft toy for a girl under 7 is a safe bet
But not for a boy of five or over
Anything with wheels ought to appeal to a boy under 4, especially if it is a character toy
Little girls love dolls
7 year old girls love Nintendo DS – so the console, games and accessories would make good presents, as would the spin-off Nintendogs toys.
Boys over 7 will probably appreciate sports equipment
But don’t bother getting sports stuff for girls. Make up, jewellery and clothes would be better.
The over 13s have expensive tastes, know what they want and where to get it. How about gift vouchers…
But we want to know more. What are the Best Toys your kids have ever had?
The survey results above tell us what the children are playing with right now. But what are our children’s Best Ever Toys? – the toys that prompt us as parents to comment “Ah yes, that was one of the best things we ever got the kids…”; the toys that are played with for months and years, not just days and weeks; the toys that you always replace when lost or broken because you can’t do without them (like the football, packs of playing cards etc.) The fashionable doll or action figure that your child cannot be parted from at the moment probably wouldn’t feature in this best toys hall of fame but perhaps the wooden train set, the box of lego or a favourite teddy would.

Go Goblin would really like you to tell them is what your family’s Best Toys Ever are. And as a thank you for spending a few minutes thinking about it and completing their very short survey, Gogoblin will enter you in a prize draw for a £50 John Lewis voucher. The closing date is 30th June 2007
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