Gifts for kids

What gifts do kids really want?

I'll go by what my own kids were (and now are) crazy about. Biased towards what little boys want.

For all kids, the preferred gift from the child's point of view is a toy. Whatever they see on tv promoted during the advertisement breaks of their favourite program is what they want for Christmas, for their birthday, or reward for some achievement or other.

To kids, toys are preferred over books or clothes.

If you want to give the child a gift the parent would really appreciate, give practical stuff like clothes, books, water bottles.. practical stuff.

If you want to give the kids something the kid would really love, try toys or movie or tv merchandise featuring their favourite characters instead.

Based on the tastes of boys aged 4 to 8, these are what they really want.. at least what mine really loved.

My kid just celebrated his 8 year old birthday and all he wanted were the bionicles toys. He already has the entire collection of books, thanks to his aunt. This time, he asked everyone who was going to get him a gift, to get him something specific, to do with the bionicles. For that entire day, my kids just played with their bionicle toys, wore some crazy plastic thing which is supposed to be a bionicle outfit and had a whale of a time.

Here are the other top toys or characters my boys love.

1. Hamtaros. They have hamtaro tree house, love the hamtaro cartoons.. even a hamtaro coloring book made my little boy's eyes light up.

2. Power Rangers. Honestly, I can't figure the draw about this show. It looks really dumb to me but the kids lap it up. They even want to dress up as power rangers and collect every power ranger thing they can find.

3. Pokemon. These are pocket monsters. A cross between hamtaros and power rangers if you ask me. They are cute little creatures that fight gladiator type challenges. Each pokemon has a different power. The main characters are Ash and his pokemon Pikachu, who sits on his shoulder rather than stay in a ball.

4. Digimon. Something like Pokemon but digital fighting creatures.

5. Hot Wheels. Meant for kids 8 and above but my kid has been assembling them since he was 3 years old. He would even combine different sets of hot wheels tracks and engines to form some pretty amazing tracks, and cause the cars to do some amazing stunts. This is my favourite gift to kids as for a change, it does get the kids' creative juices flowing.

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