Is the VTech Kidizoom Action Cam worth buying?

The idea is better than the execution — skip this one and put the money toward literally anything else on this list. There you have it — ten real-world picks for five-year-old boys, with honest notes about what works, what has caveats, and what to skip. The through-line in everything that earned a ‘yes’ from me? Open-ended play. Things that don’t have a single correct outcome. A kid who can build, dig, stomp, draw, or jump their way through an afternoon is a kid who’s engaged, and that’s the whole ballgame at this age. My one piece of practical dad advice: when in doubt, ask the parents what the kid is obsessed with right now. That phase — dinosaurs, trains, superheroes, sharks, whatever it is — is your North Star. A dinosaur-obsessed five-year-old will get ten times more mileage out of a dinosaur excavation kit than a generic toy that doesn’t speak to who he is this week. I hope this list saves you some time, some guesswork, and maybe one accidental 2am foot injury. If you’ve found something that worked brilliantly for the five-year-old in your life that I didn’t mention here, drop it in the comments — I genuinely read them all, partly for the ideas and partly because Maisie likes to sit next to me and offer her own commentary. She’s already working on her picks for next year’s list. I have been informed it involves ‘probably more slime.’

Note W000510. Filed.