My daughter has her own “iPhone.” Or more accurately, she has a clear plastic iPhone bumper cover with a paper image of an iPhone screen taped into it. It’s her favorite phony phone toy – she prefers it to her rotary and flip styles – and she seems to like it as much (or nearly much) as my real iPhone.
Here’s how I cobbled the fake iPhone toy together. I combined an old translucent iPhone bumper cover (like this one) with the paper screen image that came in this iPhone cover that I bought for my husband at Walgreens.
At about $5 total construction cost, this homemade iPhone is a lot cheaper than the other toy smartphones out there and unlike the others, it actually resembles an iPhone. You probably could make a similar version for even less money if you can figure out how to turn a screenshot of your iPhone screen into an image to paste or tape in, eliminating the cost of the second cover.
The downside of this fake smartphone toy, however, is that your kids will likely try to eat the paper screen, as my daughter did for a while and thus, her phone only has half a screen.
For those who don’t want to risk digested paper or aren’t feeling crafty, another slightly more costly idea is simply to buy a plastic iPhone display model like this $11 one. Of course, our clever kids will still try to take the real thing when they get a chance. As one reviewer of the “dummy” display phone wrote on Amazon.com, “I got this so my toddler would get off my back about stealing mine. He took one look at it, held it and knew it was fake.“ If it turns out your child can’t be fooled by the fake smartphone you provide, you might want to try out this Fisher Price case that transforms your iPhone into a toy.
What iPhone & smartphone toys do you like? How have you dealt with your baby/toddler wanting to play with your phone?
My daughter prefers her fake iPhone over her other phone toys and has tried to eat much of the paper screen.
[…] this kind of custom photo phone case isn’t cheap (and is far more expensive than the bumper design I recently bought my husband), it eliminates the need to carry around wallet pictures of children or to have to scroll into your […]