Inside the Rigorous Process of Toy Testing at Good Housekeeping
As parenting editors at Good Housekeeping, we take toys seriously. (Okay, we have a lot of fun with them, too!) As parents ourselves, we understand the frustration of buying a toy that doesn’t live up to its promise, breaks right away or gets played with for five minutes before being abandoned. Our goal is to help families find toys that can withstand rough play, are safe and most importantly, are fun enough for kids to keep coming back to.
Each year, we put hundreds of toys through multiple rounds of testing as part of a year-long process leading up to the Good Housekeeping Toy Awards, our annual list of the year's must-have gifts for kids, now in its 17th year. We also keep up-to-date lists of the most popular toys throughout the year. Here's how we determine our recommendations.
Marisa LaScala
Senior Parenting Editor Marisa LaScala has contributed to GH's toy coverage since 2018. She previously wrote about parents, families and work at Parents and Working Mother. Marisa lives with her husband (a Star Wars toy collector) and daughter (a D&D enthusiast who has tested more than 20 toy submissions herself).
Jessica Hartshorn
Contributing Writer Jessica Hartshorn has spent countless hours poring over our toy data and tester feedback. She previously ran the Best Toys program for Parents magazine and covered the baby-gear market for the brand. As a mom of two, she also reviews parenting products of all kinds for the Good Housekeeping Institute.
Alec Scherma
Alec Scherma is a mechanical engineer in the Good Housekeeping Institute. When it comes to toy testing, in addition to building many of the toys himself to provide an engineer’s perspective, he also conducts hands-on testing of parenting gear, including strollers, sound machines and more.
Amanda Constantine
Amanda Constantine is a is a reviews analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute. She managed the consumer testing experience for this year's Toy Awards, overseeing the matching of at-home testers to hundreds of product submissions and coordinating the in-Lab toy testing experience with kids.
Lexie Sachs
Lexie Sachs is the executive director of strategy and operations at the Good Housekeeping Institute and a lead reviewer of products in the parenting space. She oversaw the planning and operations of this year's Toy Awards program. Lexie is also a mom of two elementary-aged children, who tested and love many of this year’s winners.
We Keep Tabs on Toys All Year Long
Our editors and experts at the Good Housekeeping Institute stay on top of all the major new toy releases each year. This involves attending trade events, like the annual Toy Fair in New York City, meeting with brands, tracking bestsellers across retailers and frequently scouring the toy aisles in brick-and-mortar stores. By doing this, we keep tabs on trends big and small — from the rise of play couches to the growing popularity of axolotls — so we can discover what's capturing kids' attention and generating buzz among shoppers.
Testing Starts in the Lab
Once we've surveyed the year's toy landscape, we bring in products for testing in the Lab, where our engineers and analysts rigorously evaluate them to ensure that they perform as promised. (You'd be surprised how often much-hyped toys fail to match their commercials.) In addition to evaluating durability and innovation, we also consider how easy it is to remove the toy from its packaging (a common pain point for parents!). For toys requiring assembly, we carefully put them together, noting the quality and construction of each one.
Sustainability in toys is an important factor for us too, and we pay close attention to brands that minimize their environmental impact. We assess the packaging — does it result in piles of single-use plastic? — and examine the manufacturing materials. If a brand makes any claims — such as using post-consumer recycled materials — we ask for supporting documentation to ensure those claims are backed by evidence.
But most importantly, our experts look out for safety red flags. They assess potential dangers, such as small parts or long strings that could be choking hazards for babies and toddlers, as well as items like water beads or unsecured high-powered magnets that have been flagged by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) for being unsafe. We pay special attention to the manufacturer's age recommendations, particularly for kids under 3. When we say a toy is suitable for toddlers, it means it's safe for 1- and 2-year-olds.
Toys Are Then Sent Into the "Field"
This is the fun part! After toys are evaluated in the Lab, we get them into the hands of the true experts — the kids. Toys that pass the Lab assessment are then sent for at-home testing. We assign toys to children based on their age and interests, as determined by screening surveys completed by parents. These surveys help match toys to kids' preferences and dislikes (because there's no point in sending a doll to a child who doesn't like dolls or a baby toy to a 6-year-old!). In 2024, we sent nearly 300 toys to the homes of over 300 children. Each toy was tested by multiple kids, with some families having more than one toy tester providing feedback.
After testing, we ask kids and/or their parents to provide detailed evaluations of each toy: how much they enjoyed it, how long they played with it, what they liked or disliked and whether they would recommend the toy to others. This feedback gives us valuable insights into which toys are hits, which are misses and which don’t hold up during real-world play.
We also invite a select group of kids into our Labs for side-by-side toy testing. In 2024, more than a dozen kids, ranging from toddlers to tweens, came to the Good Housekeeping Institute for play sessions with toys set up for them. This part of the process is a staff favorite because it allows us to see firsthand which toys kids naturally gravitate toward in a room full of playthings. Sometimes, their favorites even surprise us!
We save all this feedback to inform our ongoing toy coverage beyond the Good Housekeeping Toy Awards, too. For instance, our writers and editors exhaustively update our gift guides for kids of every age throughout the year, helping you to narrow down the options for the children on your list for birthdays, holidays and beyond.
Other Considerations
We — along with the parents of our kid testers — love to see toys that support various developmental skills. When evaluating them, we also consider:
Does it help kids practice their fine or gross motor coordination?
Does it prompt them to use their creativity and imagination?
Does it make them use their strategy, logic or problem-solving skills?
Does it offer any sensory benefits?
Does it provide any social-emotional learning?
Does it expose kids to or represent different people and cultures?
Will it help them in any academic subjects, like STEM or reading?
Again, if kids tell us the toy isn't fun to play with, all of that is moot, but we like to keep learning in mind when deciding if something is worthy of recommending.
We also make sure we're offering options for every budget. While we won’t recommend a toy that doesn’t offer good value, we don’t set an upper price limit for the toys we evaluate. If a toy’s quality justifies a higher price tag and can be enjoyed by multiple kids for years, we include it in our recommendations. But we also love a bargain! You’ll find plenty of $15-and-under picks from our team as well.
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