On Thursday I drove down to New York City with fellow blogger Beth Giusti of Real Life Mama Drama. We were going to New York to participate in The Toy Insider HoliDAY of Play. This was a special event where The Toy Insider revealed their top lists for he Holiday Season. They have three lists: The Hot 20, The STEM 10 and the TECH 12. These are the toys that you should be on the lookout for because they are going to fly off the shelves. These lists are found in The Toy Insider Holiday Gift Guide and also the Family Circle. I am a writer for The Toy Insider and received some toys at the end of the event. I was not paid to attend or compensated in any way for my coverage. You can see the toys below and some more information about the event.

In addition to the top lists from The Toy Insider there were also picks from a new spin-off from The Toy Insider, The Pop Insider. The Pop Insider made their own list of 12 hot toys from within 12 different fandoms like Game of Thrones, Star Wars and more. You can see the top items in the image above and I even got to get my hands on something really powerful and cool. I did not snap my fingers, though.

There were a ton of people showing their toys at the event. One of them, Adventure Force, a series from Dart Zone and exclusive to Walmart, had a target range set up. It was so much fun to play with these blasters.

A post shared by Drew Bennett (@benspark) on Sep 20, 2018 at 4:08pm PDT

There were tons of great toys to play with. I had fun playing with all sorts of toys and entering contests. It was like Santa’s workshop there. I had been standing next to the Zoom Tubes talking with my friend Chad and the next thing I knew the rep handed me two boxes of Zoom Tubes! I can’t wait to open these and play with Andrew. On to the Toy Lists.

There were displays of each of the lists of toys. I shot a photo of each and I will include a downloadable list for you to see all the details on each toy.

2018 HOT 20 are twenty of the hottest toys from babies to teens. One of the toys from the list that we love at our house is Hairdorables. These are fun and cute dolls with big hair and lots of accessories. They come in fun packaging that is great for unboxing videos. They were on display at Sweet Suite and Eva got one. She made an unboxing video of the one Hairdorables that she received. She’s in for a treat because I won a set of 12 of them while at the HoliDAY of play!! More unboxing videos to come.

The toys in the 2018 STEM 10 have great options for science and discovery. We actually have not reviewed any of the toys from this list, but I am excited to review the Nintendo LABO Vehicle Kit. It looks like it is going to be a lot of fun to play.

The 2018 TECH 12 have some incredible toys and we’ve reviewed a couple of them so far and there are more that I am excited to review. The two toys that we’ve reviewed were the K’NEX Thrill Rides: Bionic Blast Roller Coaster Building Set and the Voice Originals: When in Rome Game. There is another game on this list that we should be receiving to review and one that I would love to check out. We should be getting Sensors Alive to take a look at and I’d like to get my hands on the the App enabled Batmobile from LEGO.

I said that I received a bag of toys upon leaving. Well, I took those toys and did a haul video with them the other day. You can see that video below.