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Wow, they are selling a lot of junk for kids this year

It's kids TV’s only saving grace - our favourite children's channel is blissfully free of adverts for dodgy plastic toys in the run up to Christmas, which you're bombarded with when you watch a more commercial channel. Of course, the cheaper the toy looks, the more likely you are to lose bits of it all over the house within five minutes of ripping off the wrapping paper, and the more my girls want it. Hummm.

Do some kids actually sit still and play nicely with itsy bitsy dollies? I'm still finding miniscule stilletos in the house two years after one of the girls received a dreaded set for her birthday. The toy dog which poos? No thanks. There's enough dog muck on the streets without a plastic equivalent on the carpet.

Life like crying and pooping baby dolls? We've already got a real life crying, pooping baby in the house, thanks very much.

Then there's the craft stuff. Have your kids ever made their own necklace which looked good enough to wear? No, didn't think so. Sticker machines? Waste of time. Board games? I don't have the patience. And glitter - don't get me started - glitter is the devil's invention, and glitter glue is just a form of severe punishment for house-proud parents.

I’m coming over all Scrooge like, but watching the ads is enough to send me into a minor depression. I imagine some kid, barely older than my own, working all the hours of the day in some freezing factory to put these boxes together, using dubious materials and with scant reward for their work. Then there's the massive logistical operation to get the stuff from some filthy industrial city in the middle of nowhere all the way to our local toy superstore, where it's grabbed off the shelf and then lies discarded in our homes a week or two later, destined to be swept up in a black bin bag and dumped.

How's that for a lifecycle? Ba humbug! What on earth do you do? It's not like you can tell your family and friends not to buy your kids presents at Christmas, but you really wish you could get one or two really GOOD things rather than a room full of rubbish. I’m all for simplifying things, and encouraging my kids to find pleasure in the occasion of Christmas rather than how many presents they get to rip open. Now I just have to endure Boogie Babes in the run up to the big day, and hope that for my ad-deprived kids, ignorance is bliss. At least until they get back to school and find out they're the only ones who didn't get a 200 piece miniature doll set.

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