LOL Suprise

Rebecca loves nothing more than watching LOL surprise opening videos on Youtube.  Of course she then wants them.   

For those who have no idea what I am talking about they are dolls that come inside a ball.  They have lots of little surprise bags (also called blind bags) inside which slowly reveal which doll you are going to get as each one in completely random.  

There are 3 types:
* Big sisters which are £12 each
* Pets which are £10 each
* Little sisters which are £6 each

Now each set has around 36 to collect and if we assume you are really lucky and get all of them first try that's a total of £1008 on small plastic dolls.  We made it very clear to her she can't collect them but we would let her have some.

Now as I type this Series 4 has been released.  The little sisters and the pets are the same price and pretty much the sames as the series 3 balls.  However, the big sisters have changed and are now £15 each.  I have made it clear to Rebecca that she can have 3 from wave one and 3 from wave 2 and that is it as they are way to expensive.  (They only release 12 dolls in the first wave and the rest are released in Wave 2, along with some of wave 1 becoming unavailable).

Why do we buy them if they are so expensive I hear you ask?
The first time we bought one we thought these would end up being ignored like all the other blind bag toys Rebecca has had in the past however we were quite surprised when Rebecca started playing with them, a lot.  This lead us to buy a couple more which we gave to her for doing well in school.  

She plays with these dolls more than her Barbies and Playmobil that she has. 

I sat down one evening and thought about these dolls and the benefits that they do offer to children who actually play with rather than the collect them.  The biggest ones is the imaginary play - these dolls have done simple things like have party, been swimming plus more exotic things such as going on lots of holidays together and even meeting Disney characters in meet & greets (Rebecca has a few disney store play sets).  The ideas that Rebecca comes up with amazes us sometimes.  
Leading on from that is vocabulary - learning new words and their meanings from the dolls names.  Rebecca and I have had a few conversations about the doll names and what they represent.  This had then lead to research on the internet to find out more information.  

To be honest I never thought about them in that way before.  Whilst, yes they are really expensive Rebecca is getting a lot from them so we will buy them, just not in large quantities.