Big Toy Day Deals on Things Our Kids Love (2024)

If you’ve ever fought the crowds to find a toy you’ve been wanting, you know that early October is actually the perfect time for parents to start their holiday shopping. Amazon knows this, which is why it’s holding a second Prime Day sales event today and tomorrow, featuring great Prime Day toys. You can find all the best Prime Day deals here. But if your kids are like mine, they’re already working on their wish list. If you say you haven’t started budgeting, you’re either lying, financially irresponsible, or your kids don’t want more than mine (I know, my fault).

We test and write about toys throughout the year, reference our other recommendations, and use price tracking software to make sure our recommendations are really good value. These are all toys that we, and our children, have tested and loved. You need an Amazon Prime membership to get the Prime Day deal value, but you can sign up for a free trial, and Prime gives you a lot of benefits.

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Toy deals

Magna-Tiles are one of the best return-on-investment toys I’ve ever bought for my kids (and one of my all-time best Stem toys recommendations). Click together the light tiles to create 2D or 3D shapes. Once they’ve made each set, the tiles just go in the bin to be remade into farms and zoos and god knows what else for years to come.

Prime Days are always the best time to stock up on Lego sets because the company often runs a bunch of promotions with 30 percent off. These bricks are amazing but also expensive (tolerances are very precise!), so try not to buy them full price, if possible. This is a great price for a basic box of colors. However, if you want to work with a kit, you have a few more options.

No need to save a few bucks on a cheap Lego set when you can save over 20 bucks on something else. very big again which is very exciting! Star Wars is huge around my house right now, and I’m looking at this more as a family holiday gift. The large figure is adjustable and comes with a matching minifig to include with your other Star Wars sets.

Photo: Particula

If you have a child who gets frustrated easily, then I can’t recommend the GoCube enough (in fact, I recommended it in our gift guide on Smart STEM Toys). A regular Rubik’s Cube just leaves you to fend for yourself in your incompetence, but the Bluetooth-connected Rubik’s Cube has shiny edges and a great app to walk you through how to solve one. Once you do that, you can learn all the different algorithms to reduce your solving time, and compete with friends! This price is for a gift pack with a charging stand, cable, and carrying case so your child can play with it on the ride home.

This 3D puzzle is one of the best analog gifts. Once complete, 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 your screens. If Notre Dame isn’t your fancy building, there are plenty of other options to choose from, all of which have great Amazon reviews. –Louryn Strampe

Photo: Yoto

Many friends bought the Yoto Player (7/10, WIRED Recommends) so their kids can play media without touching a screen. The pixelated light clock is great, so it can sit on the nightstand and tell the kids when to wake up, and you can play audiobooks with insertable cards (you can even create your own content with blank cards). The smaller Yoto Mini ($55) is also on sale.

This squishy baby speaker is perfect for little kids ages 3 to 7 because it can withstand drops, spills, and other damage. You get five character figures through the speaker (including Spider-Man and Playtime Puppy) and when placed on top they trigger related songs or stories. The content is usually less than an hour, sometimes much shorter, but you can buy additional characters for all kinds of content, including Paddington Bear, Disney, and Pixar movies. — Simon Hill

My kids spent three to four years completely obsessed with kinetic sand, which is a great return on investment for affordable sand. As my colleague Simon Hill notes (who has similarly obsessed children), kinetic sand behaves like wet sand, except it looks, feels, and smells great and isn’t wet. With the caveat that you’ll have to confine it to a table or play area and/or invest in a robot vacuum, your child will be able to mold and shape it to their heart’s content.

Photo: 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 are much cheaper than high-end movie replicas, so your kids can play with them. It looks like Amazon has discounts on other black helmets, including the Scout Trooper ($72) and The Mandalorian ($70). — Simon Hill

This clever puzzle challenges you to assemble Tetris pieces on a three-dimensional puzzle board. With 100 3D puzzles that require spatial thinking and problem-solving skills to overcome, this will keep kids 8 and up busy for a long time. They get stronger as you progress, but not too hard. Maker Educational Insights offers a number of other brain-teasing puzzles especially for young children, including Kanoodle Genius (also on sale). — Simon Hill

Gaming Deals

Photo: Simon Hill

If you have sensitive children who do not do well in direct competition, you may have more success with cooperative play. Here, up to five players work together to defeat characters from classic movie spin-offs, such as Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein, to save the city, its citizens, and you. I’ll probably get this for Halloween when my kids get rained on trick or treating (hello, PNW). Check out more family board games here.

Called at first Residents of Catanthis immersive strategy game is about collecting and trading resources to build roads, settlements, and cities on a randomly generated board of four-sided tiles. Collecting enough points to win requires good strategy and luck with the dice rolls. My kids love the trading and loot mechanic, which allows you to steal cards from your opponents and block their resources (although it can cause crashes). The game is suitable for three or four players and usually lasts about an hour. There are various extensions and a new version called Catan: New Powers (7/10, WIRED Recommends) if you 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 smaller version for 5-year-olds. Your swashbuckling kindergartener can learn to trade too. —and they rob—people by playing like little pirates at sea. They will also learn to argue. There’s a lot.

You have to decorate the palace of the King of Portugal using colorful, decorative tiles, inspired by the Moorish designs of the Alhambra palace in Southern Spain. Pick tiles each round to fill your game board, but plan carefully to get high score sets and patterns. Like many of the best family board games, it’s quick to learn but has real tactical depth. –Simon Hill

Photo: Clixo

This irresistible building kit makes our Best STEM Toys guide and is a great gift for kids of all ages. Clixo’s colorful, flexible, magnetic pieces snap together, allowing you to create all kinds of three-dimensional shapes, from crowns to cats. The pieces stack neatly and are very compact when stacked. They’re durable and washable, and you can play with them anywhere—you don’t need a table. Clixo kits are suitable for children aged 4 and up, but teenagers and even adults will get a kick out of them. — Simon Hill

One of the best family board games for young children, Labyrinth is easy enough for everyone to pick up. The game board is a maze, and your challenge is to collect the collection of treasures indicated by the dealt cards. This game was designed by a German psychologist, and the fun comes from the ability to change the maze by pushing a tile on the board, removing each turn. You can carve a lane 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 like to play on the Nintendo Switch, it’s a good idea to have a case to carry them around. We like this one because it’s affordable and has extra pockets for an extra controller or cables and a sleeve for game cartridges. It also comes in a variety of fun colors.

Image: Amazon; Getty Images

If your child loves to clean up like mine does, and asks you to let them use a broom twice their size, this set from Melissa and Doug can make cleaning up after dinner a breeze by giving them a set that’s their size. It includes a small broom, mop, duster, hand broom, dust pan, and a stand to hold all these useful cleaning toys. They really work—when my son decides he really needs a full-sized broom, I borrow his set to do the job.

Get kids into art and sculpting early with this mold-and-bake polymer clay set. It includes 57 different colors for them to play with, and opens up the world of creativity for your children. Phone reviewer Scott Gilbertson says the things his kids built with this set didn’t always stick, but that’s not a bad thing—it’s part of the learning process.

To call my two-year-old a high-energy child is an understatement. I’ve been able to get compliments on his good behavior, and it’s always been that way because he has a sticker book. These reusable sticker books from Melissa and Doug are my go-to way to entertain my son or his friends at the restaurant, in the doctor’s waiting room, or just on a lazy Sunday morning at home.