Thrifty Thursday: How to Deal with Expensive Kids Habits

I haven't been feeling particularly frugal or thrifty recently.  My son has gotten into a new passion!  I have been powerless to stop his new love.  He is passionate about Skylanders Swap Force.  My husband found the game on sale at Toys R Us over Memorial Day weekend so he ordered it online.  He payed with PayPal money which is money that has come in from selling things (and a small amount from my Saving Star account).  It seemed great since it was over half off and would make him happy at the bargain price of $33.

The game starter pack comes with three guys so we thought that we were doing great and that would be enough to work with and play the game.  Boy were we wrong!  Just a little lesson in case  your kids aren't obsessed with it like mine is, each character has a element (and special characters also have an ability).  What we quickly learned while playing the game was in order to play different areas of the game you need the different elements and abilities (and we only had three elements)!!  What we learned that night after my son had gone to bed is that this is an expensive habit. Most of the guys are $10-$20 each!!  As my son keeps repeating, there are 55 characters for

The sale was over at Toys R Us the next day!  We looked on Craiglist list and there wasn't anything worth looking at because people were charging even more crazy prices.  We looked on Amazon and the prices weren't really great either but I had two gift cards on my account so I had $75 that wouldn't be spending any money out of pocket and getting enough characters to open all the elements in the game.  I put everything in the cart and then went to make dinner.  Four of the items were gone by the time we were done with dinner!  UGH, back to the drawing board and it was over the total of the gift card amount.  I was determined not to spend money.  I re-did the order and put it in quickly before more of the items were gone.

My cousin called and said that she was at her friend's house for dinner and her son had already beat the Skylander Giants game and wasn't interested in the guys so she offered to sell them all to us!  She took a picture that night and sent it over with 19 characters.  Two of the characters were on the order that we just put in so we quickly checked and we were able to cancel that part of the order.  My parents are going to bring down the huge selection of new characters and the Skylanders Giants game from my cousin!!!

We are now the proud owner of three Skylanders from Amazon for $42 (remaining $33 in gift card for another order later).  We will soon be the proud owner of 19 additional characters soon.  Counting the starter pack with the game, portal of power, and three characters, we have spent no money out of pocket on this new passion for my son.  We look forward to playing both games with all of the characters to open in the different areas.  One website said that they estimated that you needed over $250 to get all of the things to play all the areas of the game so we are hopeful that we can use a little bit more Amazon gift card and PayPal money to get whatever remaining needs he has after playing through all of the areas that we can currently access!!

Hoping to make it through this one with low expenses but fearing the next one!!!  We have already been through Thomas and Friends, Cars, and Legos so hoping for any advice on how to do the older years cheaper because these toys are getting more expensive.  How do you deal with these expensive children's toys and games?