Cheap toys can be good toys too. In this day and age, under twenty dollars qualifies as cheap. There are a lot of cheap toys out there that are really fun. So, if you want to give a toy gift for a child and you can’t spend much, it isn’t being chintzy to consider cheap toys.

Make Your Own Cheap Toys

Of course, you may not even need to spend a cent if you make your own toys. This is probably the best way to get cheap toys. Some ideas would be to make a sock puppet, make a little diorama or scene out of a box, sew a costume, make a boardgame or even make some snowglobes.  

The teddy bears at left were made using felt scraps and other bits of things found around the house.  You can easily draw your own patter up.  Kids toys don't have to be perfect - just think colorful!

There are many DIY articles online that will help you make cheap toys. Have a look around and check for supplies in your cupboards and you may be surprised with what you can come up with.

Dollar Store Cheap Toys

Be sure and check out your local dollar store for cheap toys. You can find toys for $1 a piece and it is a good opportunity to stock up. Buy a small selection of cheap toys and keep it in a cupboard for when a surprise birthday comes along or another occasion that you wish you already had a gift to bring along.

Second Hand Cheap Toys

When yard sale season rolls around, this is one of the best places to look for cheap toys. People are in the mood to clean out their houses in the spring and more often than not, if they have children in the house, they will be apt to get rid of toys... and cheaply. Year round, be sure and check into thrift shops and charity shops. Things can be had for very cheap there.

Other Cheap Toys Ideas

Morph-O-Scopes are a really great selection for cheap toys. They are basically distorted coloring pages. They come with a cup shaped mirror that you set on the page to bring the objects into clarity. These things are fun and entertaining and kids love to do the reveal with the mirror.
Joining the Morph-of-the Month Club is less than ten dollars and you get links to ten morphs, a mirror, crayons, and links to new morphs. This toy promotes concentration and imagination in kids six to fourteen.

The Zolo Ha Ha Mirror and rattle is a cheap toys selection for babies. Babies enjoy looking at themselves and playing with rattles. Here are two for the price of one. Zolo Ha Ha Mirrors cost less then ten dollars.

The Star Fountain is a cheap toys bathtub selection. It costs around ten dollars and flashes a blue light as water shoots out the star in a sprinkler effect. It will be a hit with parents because it gets the kid in the tub every night.

Appleletters is a spelling game in a red apple case. Its one of the best cheap toys because its not only cheap, but educational as well. Children can play it like dominoes, only using letters instead of dots. It comes with other, more challenging, game instructions, too. Children really like the carrying case, also. Appleletters cost around seventeen dollars.

Rainbow Brushes are colored markers that you can snap together to write or draw in rainbows. There is a DVD in the introduction kit to show how to mark bright colored art. You can also get kits with dinosaurs and flowers. At ten dollars, it is one of the best cheap toys for the aspiring young artist.

The Play-Doh Burger Builder is one of the classic cheap toys, at under fifteen dollars. This kit includes five cans of Play-Doh, and a press to create onions, pickles, lettuce, and a brand new Play-Doh chip maker. Building the burger is pretty much intuitive.

Cahootie is a variation on the fortune-telling game kids used to play with slips of paper. The kit features eleven themes and forty reusable stickers, so the game is always different. It is always fun to tell fortunes, especially at seven dollars or so.

The Crayola Box of sixty-four crayons is only about five dollars and it now comes with a code for Crayola’s Lights, Camera, Color!, which is a new system they’ve created that turns family photos into coloring pages. You can get twenty-four hours of free uploading with the code. Lights, Camera, Color! Even allows children to add borders, backgrounds, and comic bodies to the coloring pages. This is probably the best cheap toys deal.

The key to finding cheap toys is to keep your eyes and ears open. Put the word out to friends and family of things that you are on the hunt for and they will also be aware of such deals to pass along.