I have a simple test I run before buying anything for my kids now. It has saved me a lot of money and almost nothing we have bought in the past year has ended up ignored.
This time last year I was standing in front of a donation box filling it with toys we had bought over the previous 2 years. Some of them had never been opened. Most of them had been used once. A few of them I genuinely could not remember buying.
I was not buying bad toys. I was buying toys that looked good, had decent reviews, seemed age appropriate. The problem was that none of that actually predicted whether my son would use them beyond the first day.
After that donation run I started paying attention differently. Instead of looking at what other parents were buying I started watching what my son actually went back to on his own. Not what he got excited about when it was new. What he was still using 3 months later without me suggesting it. The list was short. Embarrassingly short given how much we had spent.
What those things had in common was pretty simple. He could use them without me. They never ran out of things to do with them. And they did not break or lose their appeal after a few weeks.
That is basically it. That is the whole test now. Before anything comes into the house I just ask whether it ticks those 3 things. Most of what I used to buy does not. Most of what I buy now does.
Not saying it works for every kid. But after 2 years of getting it wrong it has made a noticeable difference to what actually gets used in our house.