Disclosure: I was given a £40 voucher free of charge by Wicked Uncle in order to review their site. However, as per my PR info disclaimer, this review is my unbiased honest opinion of the service.
Product: Wicked Uncle – an online gift shop for children
Price: Varies per gift
Age Range: Gifts suitable from baby to teens
Manufacturer’s Description: Children can seem a complete mystery. What they eat is hard enough to work out, let alone what interesting toys they might want for their birthday. And it is not always easy to remember birthdays. We have scoured the world to create The World’s Best E-Toy Shop and to find a really useful selection of fun, unusual presents for children. We can giftwrap your gifts, send them direct with a handwritten birthday card and send you reminders for ever. We have great toys too, many of them tested extensively in our own homes by our junior Toy Testers.
Rating:
Review: We were invited to try out the Wicked Uncle online gift shop, to buy some presents for our girls and share our thoughts on the site. Wicked Uncle gave us a £40 voucher to spend how we liked, and we had fun choosing gifts for Georgie and Lydia.
Rather than sort toys by category, Wicked Uncle let you choose the gender and then age of the child you are shopping for, and then display everything they stock that is suitable for that child. With a lego-mad tomboy preschooler, I’m not keen on splitting up toys by girls and boys, to be honest, and I wasn’t too pleased to see this approach. Having that that, however, they do have a good amount of toys that are in both gender categories, including the marble run we chose for Georgie, and the Katie the Kitten bath book we got for Lydia.
Wicked Uncle have a standard delivery charge per order within the UK of £2.95, irrespective of size and weight, which is great if you are buying something large, or multiple items – but not so brilliant if you are choosing just one small gift. I thought it was very good value for our large box of gifts, however. The parcel was packed well, with large air bubble packaging stopping the toys from moving around in the box. The delivery time was very speedy, and the package included a special “thank you” postcard so that a child receiving a gift can fill in the blanks send to the gift-giver.
Georgie and Lydia have both been delighted with their toys. The marble run is great; good quality and Georgie can build it up with minimal help from an adult – we have done all of the set ups illustrated on the box, and invented some of our own, too. It is a lot of fun for all involved, and Georgie loves sending the marbles speeding down, racing them down two different paths.
Lydia and Georgie are both enjoying the bath book, and we were able to get rid of one or two old sad looking ones in the bathroom with this new arrived. The squeaker on the front cover is a hit with Lydia in particular, and she has had her new book out in most of her baths since it arrived. The illustrations by Axel Scheffler are of his usual fantastic standard, and the rhyming story is very sweet.
Overall I was quite pleased with Wicked Uncle. Although I wasn’t keen on the gender split, I understand that some shoppers are looking for that, especially if they don’t know what the child they are buying for generally prefers. The actual range of toys is brilliant, with some great brands and lovely gift ideas. I would certainly keep the site in mind when gift shopping for my niece and nephew.
The prices aren’t amazing, and we could have found both our items cheaper elsewhere, but Wicked Uncle is unique in that it is tailored as a gift shop, and they can take a lot of the hassle of gift giving our of your hands. They offer gift wrap, with a good range of kid-friendly designs at a cost of £2.95 for the first gift and £1.50 per gift after that. As well as wrapping, you can buy hand written greetings cards for an additional £1.95 – and they have a lovely range of cards.
I’ll definitely be visiting Wicked Uncle again when gift shopping for children, especially as a lot of kids I might buy for live a fair distance from us. 4 stars.
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