Christmas Toys

The test of a Christmas toy is not the morning. It is the twenty-seventh, when the paper is out, the relatives have gone home and one thing is still on the floor being used. That is the only thing worth checking before you buy. Christmas toys for kids that pass it have no finished state: nothing runs out of story once it has been opened, and nothing needs an account to keep working in January.

A magnetic building set anchors the list, because a box of cubes is a different toy in January than it was on the morning of the twenty-fifth. Squishies cover the stocking stuffers end: small, cheap enough to buy several of, and instantly understood by a child who has not had breakfast yet. Softer building blocks suit the cousins who open a present and hand it straight back. Nothing here needs assembling before it can be played with, which matters on a morning when four other boxes are already open.

For the three-year-old who unwraps and hands it back, the squishies land first. For the seven-year-old who builds, a block set holds most of the week off school. Buying Christmas toys for kids at several ages at once is where the multi-buy price earns its keep: at three items the whole order drops by about a third.Nothing ships the same day, and the crossing takes one to two weeks on top of that.

A good Christmas toy is the one you find underfoot in March and are glad to see rather than annoyed by. Buy those, wrap them, and the rest of the list stops mattering quite so much on the morning itself.