One of my daughter’s favorite toys is currently her Fisher-Price Friendly Flip Phone.
Like her mom and dad, she likes having her phone with her when she’s out and about, it’s in her room when she goes to sleep and she sometimes even sleeps with it.
So, when the phone’s batteries went dead, my husband made a special trip to Walgreens just to get new batteries for the toy. He spent roughly $13 on three Energizer 1.55 volt batteries, including tax. Then, when he got home, we saw that similar Fisher-Price phones retail for about $10 on Diapers.com and Toysrus.com.
In other words, we bought replacement batteries that cost more than what a replacement toy phone would cost. Instead, we probably should have just bought our daughter a new (and less worn out) version of the phone. Or, we should have at least skipped buying new batteries for her old phone.
So you don’t make the same mistake we did, today’s hint is to do this before you buy new batteries for a toy: Be sure compare the cost of replacement batteries for a toy with the toy’s cost.
If the batteries seem to cost more than the toy, shop around for a cheaper version of the batteries (DealNews has some helpful battery shopping tips), consider buying a new version of the toy instead or just don’t replace the batteries. In fact, many parents actually take batteries out of noisy toys to quiet annoying sounds.
Meanwhile, if many toys and other items in your house use the same type of batteries, you may also want to think about investing in rechargeable batteries, a strategy advocated by Trent over at The Simple Dollar.
Finally, it turns out that the batteries my husband bought at Walgreens can be found for cheaper than what he paid. During a recent search, for instance, I found them available for about $6 at Home Depot. Still, it’s questionable whether spending even $6 on new batteries for a $10 toy is worth it, especially considering the wear and tear that toddler toys go through.
What are your money-saving strategies for replacing – or not replacing – toy batteries?
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We have also found that batteries on store shelves have likely been sitting there a long time and do not work for very long. If you buy them online (we’ve had good luck with Amazon), they are more likely to be fresher and work better/longer, as well as being cheaper. It’s worth it to us to keep putting batteries in the toys he truly loves. 🙂
Great tip:) We may do our battery shopping online now going forward.
Wow! We went through this exact thing twice. A friend gave my son a musical giraffe on wheels (can’t imagine who came up with that toy, but it’s one of his favs). One day the batteries died and my husband also ran off to walgreens for the 3 button batteries because he couldn’t resist saying no to a sad toddler. He didn’t tell me how much they were. Three months later it happened again, heartbroken toddler. This time I saw the receipt….$12. He spent $24 to keep our son happy with an 8 buck toy!
Some months later, the giraffe seemed like the battery was going to die, so I hid it, looked on amazon, and bought 100 button batteries for $8. They seem to work fine, this is the first set I use, but even if they get replaced more often, it’s still way more cost effective.
That said, the manufacturers of this toy are out of their minds to make this toy run on watch batteries. Seems cruel.
Funny:) I guess we’ve learned not to buy batteries at Walgreens, and great tip about the cheaper batteries available at Amazon.com.