Tonight we gave Eva her birthday gift from Allison’s parents. They bought her a big toy. A big toy is one that requires over an hour on assembly and makes noise and is fairly expensive. They had us pick it up and wrap it for them (because they live in Florida). Allison and I had decided upon the specific toy because we knew that Eva would get a lot of fun out of using it. The toy is called the Laugh and Learn Home. On one side of the facade it looks like the outside of a house and on the other side it is the inside of that house.

The toy retails for $65.00 or more, it was over $70 at Toys ‘R Us. We had a 15% off coupon but with tax it was still around $62.00. To me that is a bit much for a kids toy that she’ll probably use for a year or less and lose interest. But it is so cool so and we weren’t paying for it so why not. I bought it kept it in the front hall.

A couple of days later I stopped at a local second hand kids store and they had not one but three of these toys for $24.99. I looked them all over and decided to buy the one that had the least amount of wear and tear plus the most amount of accessories. Basically the most complete set I could find.

The Laugh and Learn Home is a Fisher Price Toy and I knew from assembling other Fisher Price toys that the instruction books list out replacement parts that you can buy. When I got home I went online and looked up the toy on the Fisher Price website and sure enough I could buy the accessory pack that included the shapes, balls and plastic pieces of mail, plus all the screws and hardware. I also could buy other parts that might have been broken or even the sticker sheets. I picked out the sticker sheet and the accessory pack and it only cost $7.00.

After a little gentle cleaning and a reapplication of the new stickers this toy was in nearly out of the box condition. All that and we cut the cost in half. Oh and I didn’t even have to build it. And clearly she loves playing with it.