Best Toys for 5-Year-Old Girl... But Not Her Parents

I always love to look at the "best" toy lists every year. Several different groups, including the Toy Industry Association, give awards to toys they think are the "best" for a variety of reasons, and you can also find plenty of opinions online about what are the best. You gotta wonder sometimes if the people giving these awards have kids.

I have two kids, an 11-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. Some of the choices on this year's list for best toys for a 5-year-old girl are ones that I'm SURE my daughter would love, but.... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't love them nearly as much.

On the top of my I'm-sure-I-wouldn't-love-it list is the toy that the Toy Industry Association gave its 2011 Toy of the Year Award - Sing-a-ma-jigs. I agree that these musical toys are innovative. After all, they harmonize if you have more than one, and they "speak their own language full of jibber and jabbers," according to Amazon.

And that's exactly my point. Jibberish jibber jabber? I hear enough jabbering when my kids start fighting over something ridiculous.

I've seen the videos of these toys on YouTube, and I am pretty sure that the high-pitched jabber and singing of these funny-looking toys would drive me crazy after only a few days because I'm sure that my daughter would want to play with her Sing-a-ma-jig nonstop for at least a week. By that time, I'm sure I'd be hoping the batteries would die (and that I didn't use rechargeable batteries so I'd have more than an hour to put off the task of replacing them!).

But I guess I'm just a Grinch. Amazon reviewers don't seem to share my opinion of these toys, as they get good reviews, and no one has mentioned being driven crazy by the sound of these toys. I'm not convinced. I've put a personal message in to Santa to make sure none of these toys end up in my daughter's Christmas stocking this year.