If you’ve ever fought a crowd to get your hands on a coveted toy, you know that early October is actually the perfect time for parents to start holiday shopping. Amazon knows this, which is why they’re holding a second Prime Day sale event today and tomorrow, with some great Prime Day toy deals. You can find the best Prime Day deals here. But if your kids are like my kids, they’re already working on their wish lists. If you say you haven’t started budgeting yet, you’re lying, or you’re financially irresponsible, or your kids are way less demanding than mine (I know, it’s my fault).

We test and write about toys all year long, cross-reference our own recommendations, and then use price tracking software to make sure what we recommend is actually a good deal. These are all toys that we and our children have tested and love. You’ll need an Amazon Prime membership to get the Prime Day deal price, but you can sign up for a free trial and Prime offers plenty of benefits.

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Toy offers

Photo: Amazon

Magna-Tiles are one of the best return-on-investment toys I’ve ever bought for my kids (and one of my perennial recommendations for the best voice toys). Snap the translucent tiles together to create 2D or 3D shapes. Once they’ve made each set, the tiles simply go into a bin to be turned into farms and zoos and God knows what else for years to come.

Prime Days are always the best time to stock up on Lego sets, as the company usually runs a number of promotions with around 30 percent off. These stones are great, but also expensive (the tolerances are so precise!), so if possible, try not to buy them at full price. This is a great price for a basic box of colors. However, if you want to work on a kit, you have a few more options.

There’s no point in saving a few bucks on a cheap Lego set when you can save over 20 bucks on something much bigger And more exciting! Star Wars is very big in my house right now, and I’m very much thinking of this as a holiday gift for the whole family. The large figure is posable and even comes with a matching minifigure so you can add it to your other Star Wars sets.

Photo: Private

If you have a child who gets frustrated easily, I can’t recommend the GoCube enough (I even recommended it in our Smart STEM Toys gift guide). A regular Rubik’s Cube just leaves you alone to bask in your own incompetence, but a Bluetooth-connected Rubik’s Cube has glowing edges and a wonderful app to help you solve them. Once you’ve done that, you can learn all the different algorithms to reduce solving time and even compete with friends! This price applies to the gift package that includes the charging stand, cable and carrying case, so your child can even play with it on the car ride home.

This 3D puzzle is one of the best analog gifts. Once completed, the puzzle can be opened 180 degrees to reveal the detailed interior. There are 293 pieces, which should give you a nice, long break from your screens. If Notre Dame isn’t your favorite beautiful building, there are many other options to choose from, all with generally positive Amazon reviews. —Louryn Strampe

Photo: Yoto

Several friends have purchased the Yoto Player (7/10, recommended by WIRED) so their kids can play media without interacting with a screen. The pixelated, light-up clock is adorable, so it can sit on a bedside table and tell kids when to get up, and you can play audiobooks with plug-in cards (you can even create your own content with blank cards). The smaller Yoto Mini ($55) is also available for purchase.

This soft kid speaker is great for young children aged 3 to 7 years as it can withstand drops, spills and other accidents. You get five character figures with the speaker (including Spider-Man and Playtime Puppy) and when placed on top they activate related songs or stories. The content is usually less than an hour, sometimes much less, but you can purchase additional characters for all kinds of content, including Paddington Bear, Disney and Pixar films. —Simon Heuvel

My kids were completely obsessed with kinetic sand for a good three to four years, which is a good return on investment for an affordable stocking stuffer. As my colleague Simon Hill notes (who also has obsessed kids), kinetic sand behaves like wet sand, except it looks, feels and smells nice and isn’t wet. With the caveat that you may have to limit it to a table or play area and/or invest in a robot vacuum, your child will be able to mold and shape it to their heart’s content.

Photo: Simon Hill

I’m a big kid and this is one of the best Star Wars gifts I’ve ever received, but any fan will love it. These helmets look good enough to please collectors, but are much cheaper than high-quality movie replicas, so your kids can play with them. It looks like Amazon has discounts on some other Black Series helmets, including the Scout Trooper ($72) and The Mandalorian ($70). —Simon Heuvel

This clever logic puzzle challenges you to fit Tetris pieces into a three-dimensional puzzle board. With 100 3D puzzles that require spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills, children aged 8 and up will be kept busy for a long time. They get harder as you progress, but never too hard. Maker Educational Insights offers a bunch of other brain-teasing puzzles specifically for younger kids, including Kanoodle Genius (also for sale). —Simon Heuvel

Game offers

Photo: Simon Hill

If you have sensitive children who simply don’t do well when competing directly with each other, you may have more success with cooperative play. Here, up to five players work together to defeat a cast of rotating classic movie monsters, such as Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein, to save the town, the villagers, and yourself. I’m probably going to buy this for Halloween, when my kids are no longer bothered by trick-or-treating (hello, PNW). View more family board games here.

Originally named Settlers of CatanThis immersive strategy game is all about collecting and trading resources to build roads, settlements and cities on a randomly generated board of hexagonal tiles. Collecting enough points to win requires the right strategy and some luck rolling the dice. My kids love the trading and the robber mechanic, which allows you to steal cards from your opponents and block their resources (although this can cause downtime). The game is perfect for three or four players and usually lasts about an hour. There are several extensions and a new version is called Catan: New energies (7/10, recommended by WIRED) if you ever want more. —Simon Hill

If you can’t get enough of Catan (formerly known as Settlers of Catan), and now your kids want to join in, there’s now a junior version for ages 5 and up. Your reckless toddler can learn how to deal with – and rob – people by playing as miniature pirates on the high seas. They also learn how to argue. A lot of.

You must decorate the royal palace for the King of Portugal with colorful, decorative tiles, inspired by the Moorish designs at the Alhambra Palace in southern Spain. Choose tiles each round to fill your game board, but plan carefully to get high-scoring sets and patterns. Like many of the best family board games, it’s quick to learn but has real strategic depth. —Simon Hill

Photo: Clixo

This irresistible building kit is included in our Best STEM Toys guide and makes a fantastic gift for kids of all ages. Clixo’s colorful, versatile, magnetic parts snap together, allowing you to build all kinds of three-dimensional shapes, from crowns to cats. The pieces stack neatly and are packed very compactly. They’re also durable and washable, and you can play with them anywhere – you don’t need a table. Clixo sets are suitable for children aged 4 and over, but teenagers and even adults will get a kick out of these too. —Simon Heuvel

One of the best family board games for young children, Labyrinth is simple enough for anyone to understand. The game board is a maze and your challenge is to collect a series of treasures determined by the cards you are dealt. This game was designed by a German psychologist and the fun comes from being able to change the maze by pushing a tile onto the board, which moves a different tile each turn. You can plan a route for yourself, but it’s also worth thinking about how to block your opponents, and the best moves do both. —Simon Heuvel

If your kids also enjoy playing the Nintendo Switch, it’s a good idea to bring a case with them as they carry it back and forth. We like this one because it’s affordable and has extra pockets for an extra controller or cables and a sleeve for game cartridges. It also comes in a wide variety of fun colors.

Photo: Amazon; Getty Images

If your child likes to clean like mine, and begs you to let him use the broom that’s twice his size, this Melissa & Doug set can make cleaning up after dinner much easier by giving him a set that fits its size. It includes a miniature broom, mop, dust cloth, a hand broom, a dustpan and a stand for all these handy cleaning toys. They really work: When my son decides he still absolutely needs a full-size broom, I borrow his set to get the job done.

Introduce kids to art and sculpture early with this polymer clay mold-and-bake set. It contains 57 different colors for them to play with, opening up a world of creativity for your children. WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson says the things his kids built with this set didn’t always hold up, but that’s not a bad thing: it’s just part of the learning process.

Calling my two-year-old an energetic child is an understatement. However, I have received compliments that he is well behaved, and it is always because he has a sticker book. These reusable sticker books from Melissa & Doug are my favorite thing to do to entertain my son or his friends at a restaurant, in the doctor’s waiting room, or even just on a lazy Sunday morning at home.