Amazon has reduced this Hello Kitty Sculpted Book Light down from £6.99 to £2.93. That includes postage as the item is offered with free super saver delivery in the UK.

• Click here for your Hello Kitty Sculpted Book Light at Amazon

It is the price really that caught my eye with this one. Low enough to pop it away as a potential stocking filler for Christmas. Otherwise, if it didn't have the free delivery, I'd have given it a miss as from the reviews it doesn't sound too robust.

However, for just under three pounds, it might be worth it even if the light only lasted a few weeks. It looks very pretty, and would make any Hello Kitty fan very happy.

The Hello Kitty Booklight has a bright LED bulb perfect for helping you read in the dark or in low lighting. It has an adjustable neck so you are able to position the light as needed. Includes batteries.

Two issues reported by customers on the website are that it detaches from the base too easily, and that the light isn't bright enough. However, there are also a similar number of positive reviews like this one. "I got this for my 6 year old who is a Kittyholic, she loves the cuteness and practical uses such as illuminating
her bedtime reads or just a handy light to have near the bedside when a standard lamp is too bright. We've had it a month and it is used every night."

Thanks to Samuelsmith87 at HUKD!

If you're looking for a little sweetie stocking filler for a Hello Kitty fan, look no further: Amazon are selling 125g Jelly Belly Hello Kitty gift boxes for £3 - John Lewis are selling them for £6.25.

• Click HERE to take a look at the Jelly Belly Hello Kitty gift boxes *

I know I'm showing my age when I reveal remembering when Jelly Belly jelly beans first hit the UK market - there was such a fuss made about them and they were significantly more expensive than your bog standard jelly beans.

Each Jelly Belly Hello Kitty gift box contains five different Jelly Belly flavours:

• Very Cherry
• Bubble Gum
• Strawberry Cheesecake
• Candy Floss
• Red Apple

And the colours vary from, and I'm quoting the official blurb here: "...pink, to more pink, to red, to very red!"

Each Jelly Bean contains four calories (if you're remotely interested in that!)  and there are approximately 25g of each flavour in each box.

Delivery of your Jelly Belly Hello Kitty gift box(es) is free, but there's a 'may require an additional two days for delivery' notice on the Amazon site - still, with just over three weeks to go until Christmas day, an extra couple of days isn't going to cause any pressie stress.

Thanks to inabit at HUKD

As Christmas fast approaches and we all start frantically looking for the perfect things to stuff into stockings, PlayPennies has gone out to find some of the coolest bits and pieces to help you along. Stabilo have a couple of offerings that are ideal for Christmas gifts in the stocking and here is how well they work…

The Stabilo EASYOriginal pen is this really funky, ergonomically designed roller ball that takes refill cartridges and, get this, actually ERASES. The pens are for kids over the age of six, come in both left and right-hand flavours, and a huge range of colours. The Stabilo EASYOriginal encourages a relaxed hold to prevent muscle fatigue and is supposed to help with neat and tidy handwriting.

The packaging is tough to get into and one of your three refills needs to be inserted into your pen to get started, a bit misleading. However, you do get a name tag! Three, in fact, in case you mess the first one up. You then pop off the cap of the refill, slip it inside the easy-twist tube and start writing.

The ink pours gloriously from the nib of this pen. And it fits beautifully in my hand. I struggled to give this to my child, the actual tester, as I am a sucker for a good pen. Ink is patchy on the twist sometimes with the line running thinner, but overall it’s a smooth experience that I love. The ink does erase and my daughter now takes it to school and refuses to use anything else! It easily gets 8/10 with a point kicked off for the ink alternations and another for the price of £6.99. High, but worth it overall.

The Stabilo Mini Ghosts are the product that I absolutely, completely and totally recommend to go it any kid’s Christmas stocking. Not only do these mini highlighters – cool in themselves – highlight very well, but they glow in the dark. Oh yes indeedy. They sport hilarious faces and expressions that glow in the dark.

The five funny ghosts are limited edition only, are the usual Stabilo quality of fluorescent ink, and just rock. They are around £5.99 (price TBC) for all five and if my kid’s face is anything to go buy, yours will adore them too. And you can split the pack if you have lots of kids and they each get one Stabilo Mini Ghost in each Christmas stocking! They easily get 9/10.

It sounds a bit gruesome doesn't it? The Body Collector is however a book for children. And yes it is a little bit gruesome, but in that way children love. Lots of scary stuff, but not too scary.

The books is to be read to younger children, or for older children to explore for themselves. It's in hardback, with a dust jacket. It is perfect for Halloween, or as a present or gift. Which is what I've got the book for - as a lovely birthday present. I get sick of giving out plastic tat all the time, so it is really nice to find a beautiful, well presented book that's perfect for giving.

Rubies is one of the brands that has license to create all sorts of costumes from leading brands like Disney. They have Marvel and Disney Princess products (The Hulk outfit is genius) that cost around £14.99 each. Although you can get two for £19.99 at Argos at the moment, which is nice for the Christmas gift hunt!

So is this £14.99 well spent?

The packaging is neat and simple and mostly recyclable and inside you get the Tangled dress along with her hair. The hair is very clever actually. You have a hair slide on one side that sort of sticks to the hair. My daughter has fine curly hair which makes this particular type of hair fastening very difficult to attach. You also get this extremely long hair that can be divided in the middle.

Yes, the hair has a Velcro end in the middle so you can make it as short or as long as your child wants. This is a neat touch I thought and my child loved it. The hair is as thick as the picture makes it look too, but does look daft on girls with dark hair.

The dress is very well made. I must admit that having both bought and been given poor quality dress-up outfits made with terribly thin fabric, I am impressed with this. It is 100% polyester so don’t expect velvet trim or anything fancy, but in terms of thickness and lack of strange scratchy bits, this is a winner.

My daughter hates dress-up that has things that tickle or poke her skin and loves this frock. Another plus is that you can get it in three size groups of Small (3-5), Medium (506) and Large (7-8) and can be neatly stored away in the same bag it came with.

I would happily say that this is a good price point for what you get; I would buy this as a Christmas gift for a Disney-mad girl any day. Also, that Argos* special offer means that you can get two for £19.99 which is nearly £10 per outfit, a decent price all round.

The Squashi Moshi fun pack was originally on sale for £17.99, then it was dropped to £14.99 and now it is a very tasty £11.99. You could wait for it to go down even further I guess, but this seems like a decent price for a very popular toy.

• Click here to get Moshis at Smyths

The pack of Squashi Moshis has ten of the dudes hidden inside and you will get different styles in each pack so nothing is guaranteed. Each Moshling will make a funny squeaky noise when you squish it apparently – something that will be initially very funny but wear thin for adults I suspect – and they are not ideal for kids under the age of three.

The pack seems pretty comprehensive with ten dudes in it but I don’t see how big they are and for just over a pound each, I kind of hope they are of a decent size. They would make great stocking fillers for Christmas though.

Thanks to weegee123 at HUKD!

Amazon has reduced the price on this Toy Story 3 alien cushion from £12.99 to only £5.48. That is a saving of £7.51, 58% off the original price, and it comes with the lovely free Super Saver Delivery.

• Click here to get saving with Amazon

When I look at some of the products that I’ve seen on sale on Amazon I can’t help but feel that nearly £6 is a lot of money to spend on a cushion that looks like an alien, no matter how cute it is. I am sure this is relative, and it is definitely a lot better value for money than the original price, but I wouldn’t buy this for £6, maybe £3.

The cushion is in the shape of the very adorable aliens from Toy Story 3 and is 28xx37cm in size. It is made from 100% polyester and would be a cute little stocking filler if you have a Toy Story mad child.

Thanks to khye_shayela at HUKD!

The Moshi Monsters Advent Calendar is down from £24.99 to £20.84 on Amazon and comes with their free Super Saver Delivery. You are saving £4.15, about 17%, off the original price on a Christmas gift that is bound to make kids go crazy with delight.

• Click here to get some Moshi Monsters with Amazon

The set is very expensive at £24.99, but you aren’t just getting an Advent calendar, which is great, you are getting some fabulous extras too. Inside the Moshi Monster advent calendar there are 24 Moshlings to collect. Seventeen of these Moshlings will be decorated in winter wonderland style with a dusting of snow.

The other seven Moshlings will be resculpted Moshlings in Christmas outfits and are considered extra special collectibles. You also get loads of codes to use online with the Moshi Monsterrs too.

Thanks to jtshl at HUKD!

mazon has reduced the price on this ace Skylanders Giants 2013 calendar from £7.99 to only £4.39. This is a nice saving of £3.60 and you can get this item delivered for free using Super Saver Delivery. It is on pre-order though, so you will have to wait for a bit.

• Click here to get giants at Amazon

The Skylanders Giants 2013 calendar is the official Skylanders calendar that has been designed to make the most of the new Skylanders figures. The latest Skylanders game – Giants – is to be released towards the end of October and is pretty much guaranteed to be a huge hit thanks to the volume of kids impatiently waiting on the expansion pack.

The calendar has a shot of each Giant along with their name, their abilities and the month. It looks pretty cool and should make an excellent stocking filler for a Skylanders fan. I am surprised Amazon can get it so cheap before it has even been released!

Thanks to panddda at HUKD!

Newitts are selling Massive Googly Balls for £3 - I'm not sure what they're full price should be, or if that is it, but they look as though they should cost more than 300 of our Great British pence to me.

• Click HERE to take a look at the Magic Googly Ball

I've never heard of Newitts before and, to be frank, I didn't like the look of their website much (it's dark and it's busy), don't be put off by that though otherwise you'll miss the chance to bag yourself one of these Magic Googly Balls - I've just ordered five of them (for Crimbo) and the entire process was plain sailing and quick, you can pay by PayPal too if you want to.

I've not heard of Massive Googly Balls either (well not in this context anyway!!) but they look rather fun and daft.

They don't do anything, as such, other than be really weird, stretchy, squashy and bouncy - well that's more than enough, isn't it?

Massive Googly Balls are the sort of thing that makes an ideal stocking filler for that big C time that's rapidly heading our way (it IS, I don't care how much you protest!  You can't stop it, it's inevitable!) - cheap, cheerful and likely to be played with a lot.

My youngest son is VERY into playing catch at the moment; yesterday we were playing catch with my smaller stability ball - it was actually really good fun and my lats are 'talking' to me this morning as a result!

Anyway, I digress (no change there then) - there's no delivery to pay if your order is destined for somewhere within mainland UK, so £3 is all you're going to pay in total for your Massive Googly Ball.

Thanks to utopia1 at HUKD

This is a great little buy for party bags and similar. Or who knows - put some away for next year's Christmas stocking! These Sticky Toy Story 3 With Target cost just £1 each at Poundland.

• Click here for your Sticky Toy Story 3 toys at Poundland

This toy is a game. You stick the target on a window, place the image on the target, and then throw the sticky at the target. The fun comes from being able to challenge all your friends. The winner is the person who catches the most pictures.

There's very little information on the website. From the look of the pack, it seems you get just one sticky toy in each package. It doesn't say what toys from the movie are available - it could be that all of them are. Strangely the pictured pack on the website has an Octopus thing in it, rather than a more familiar Woody or Buzz toy. I'm actually a bit stuck trying to remember an Octopus character in the movie. So I figure that the Octopus is the sticky bit for the window, and the Toy Story Character is what you get on the image you can collect.

Click on the button on the website to find your nearest story to pick some up. At least then you'll be able to have a look at which ones you're getting.

Thanks to TEMP11 at HUKD!

Now here's an excellent present for a Christmas Stocking. This Plasticine Mega Pack is £8.50 at Tesco Direct, reduced from £20.

• Click here for your Plasticine Mega Pack at Tesco Direct

Plasticine is fun on its own, and also great for making accessories for other games and toys. Like rocks and plants for toy train sets, or to go with a Lego set.

It was a favourite of mine when I was a kid too. What I really liked about plasticine is that unlike Play Doh, it doesn't dry out. Also, it is harder so you can make proper models with it.

However, it can get mucky and won't necessarily last forever. Especially if it is used to help accessorise other games! Replenishing their plasticine stock is an excellent use of the good old Christmas stocking. And this is a huge pack, at a good price.

This Plasticine mega pack contains 20 different colours of placticine plus loads of cool accessories, allowing your offspring to make hundreds of cool models. Placticine will never dry out so you can use it over and over again. Plasticine is suitable for children in the age range of 3 years and upwards, although I think they get the best use out of it if they're 5 or older.

Thanks to mummybones at HUKD!

This would make a nice Christmas present or stocking filler for a little one. I always liked singing with my son when he was a toddler (and too little to realise how out of tune mummy was). I never knew that many songs though. The First Songs Library Sing-along Books are £3.99 including delivery at Play.com. The normal RRP is £12.99.

• Click here for your Sing-along Books at Play.com

The First Songs Library Sing-along Books are a collection of three illustrated books. These contain 50 of our favourite nursery rhymes, lullabies and sing-along songs. Well favourite according to the makers of these books, so I guess that means the most well known. I know so little of these songs, I was a bit surprised there were fifty of them!

The website says that children will love to sing along to the musical versions on the specially-recorded audio CD. In my experience that's usually true. Especially older babies and toddlers. Not all of them like those little playgroups where you do sing songs though. My son didn't, and the lad I used to babysit wasn't fond of them either. Something like this to sing at home is ideal then.

Thanks to MissGem at HUKD!

A great stocking filler for any Happyland fan, the Happyland Christmas set is £5 at Early Learning Centre, reduced from £10. If you add the promotional code: SANTA Lynley wrote about a week ago, you’ll also get another £1 off, although the free delivery doesn’t seem to work anymore. You’ll be better off collecting in store, as £4.95 for delivery is pretty rough when you’re only paying £4 for the set.

• Bring Christmas cheer to Happyland

Happyland sets have been around forever, haven’t they? I saw a display once of all the Happyland ‘special’ characters and it was rather impressive, actually!

The Happyland Christmas set is a 5-piece set, consisting of Santa, his sleigh, Rudolph, a snowman and a Christmas tree and they are suitable for children from 18 months and up.  The single reviewer on ELC says his daughter plays with it all the time and that it would be great to see more Happyland Christmas figures to add to the set. S/he also says that it’s worth the money and makes a great stocking filler.

The Happyland Christmas set has also been awarded a Mumsnet Best 2010 award.

Thanks to Luckypie at HUKD

Use this The Hut promotional code to get 10% off toys. The best bit is that the code works on items in the sales, and there's up to 80% off (and sometimes more) on selected items. Delivery is free on the site.

Click here to use your 10% The Hut promotional code

• Discount: 10%
• Promotional code: MVCTOYS
• Expires: Unknown

To use this code, go to the Shopping Basket and enter it in the Discount Code box. The discount will be listed in a separate row under the subtotals column.

I tested it out on a Kung Zhu Base Playstation , in the sale marked down from £29.99 to £4.99. A saving of 83%. The discount code took another 50p off the price. The total came to £4.49 and that includes delivery.

I love it when discount codes work on sale items. It feels like you're getting a double bargain then. This one would be great to pick up a few items for stocking fillers. I got a few other toys from there, all coming to under £5 each with the discount applied.

Thanks to timtom13 at HUKD!

This Christmas Penguin Books are offering 25% off their range of children's Christmas books. This includes books from their ladybird range for younger children, and puffin range for older kids, as well as their boxsets. There's also discounts on their Dr Who and Top Gear books. Just to make it an even better deal, the site is offering free delivery until the 31st January, 2012.

• Click here for your Christmas books at Penguin

If you're a parent then you're probably feeling overloaded with toys already. Christmas is a huge toyfest and you may be thinking there's some balance needed. A couple of books could be just the balance you're after!

Doctor Who: Where's the Doctor for example has been reduced from £8.99 to £6.74. These are a bit like the Where's Wally books, but instead you search through Cybermen, dig through the Daleks and ogle the Ood to find the Doctor and his friends. A bit more exciting I think!

For younger kids there's the really lovely Ladybird Big Noisy Book of Christmas Songs. An excellent stocking filler. It was £10.99 and is now £8.24.

Oh and here is a wonderful book that would make a beautiful gift especially if you've a god child or niece/nephew to buy for. It is the Amazing Pop-Up Tale of Peter Rabbit, reduced from £14.99 to £11.24.

All I want for Christmas is ... Chances are a lot of kids are going to have a micro scooter on their list of Christmas gifts. My son has one, and I can't think what I'd do without it. When we're out it keeps him going in a straight line, it has a lot of entertainment value when at the park, and is perfect for day trips.

Invariably there's acres of walking to do where-ever we go. Just getting from the tube to the Natural History museum is a trek! So he doesn't get tuckered out too early, and for the trip home again at the end of the day when we're all tired, the micro scooter means I don't have a whiny child. He can stand on it, and it is effortless to pull along. Oh, and I can hang my bag on the handle too.

Even if it isn't for their main Christmas present list, Micro Scooters sell a number of accessories as well. Handy for stocking fillers and as smaller Christmas gifts.

So I was thrilled that we'd get a chance to review some of these. Always good to be able to pass on relevant and practical buying information for our parent readers. Sadly (for me) we don't get to keep this stuff, but you can read on to find out what we found heart wrenching to send back, and what we were more than happy to return.

Click here to read more...

Use this Ladybird Books promotional code to get 25% off your order and free delivery when you buy selected Christmas books. Unfortunately I couldn't work out how to tell which books in the Christmas section that this applies to, so there is a bit of trial and error involved. Worth it to pick up a lovely present or stocking filler.

Click here to use your Ladybird Books promotional code

• Discount: 25% and free delivery
• Applies to: selected Christmas books
• Promotional code: ladybirdxmas2011
• Expires: 31st January 2012

To use this code, go to the Shopping Basket, enter it in the Coupon Code box, and press the Update Basket button. You'll see the discount automatically applied, and the free delivery further on through checkout.

Free delivery is always a favourite of mine as it means you can pick up just one item, without having to add that extra amount (which often makes it less of a bargain).

I'm not sure which of the books in the Christmas section this can be applied to. I rather excitedly tried to buy the Christmas Carols Book and CD, but it wouldn't let me use the code. Next I tried it on the My First Christmas Collection: Little Library. This had been priced at £5 but the code took that down to £3.74.

Thanks to hikilburn at HUKD!

I did a Santa box last year, instead of a stocking or Santa sack, but the principle is the same. This was a sturdy, silver covered present box that I'd bought at WH Smiths, I think. Inside it was filled with all his stocking filler presents, individually wrapped. The advantage of the box (and why I thought of it) was that all the little bits could be popped back in there to keep from getting lost in the unwrapping frenzy.

Last year on PlayPennies we talked about the amount of money we would spend on the stocking fillers. Most people seemed to have a budget of around £20, and felt they were good at sticking to this. The cannier spenders made the money go as far as possible by snapping up bargains.

So here's the top ten hottest toys for children, and by hottest I mean cheapest, that are still in stock. I trawled through the pages of bargains that are posted on our sister site HUKD to find these for you. Read on for cheap stocking filler ideas.

Click here to read more...

What a cute little stocking filler. This Hello Kitty Pocket Library is reduced from £4.99 to £2.49. You don't have to be a maths genius to work out that's a saving of £2.50. Delivery is free if you enter the promotional code 117free  when you get to checkout. The cheapest I could find this elsewhere was £3.79 at Amazon (with free delivery with Amazon Prime).

• Click here for your Hello Kitty Pocket Library at Redhouse

What I like is that this is Hello Kitty but not completely, utterly, and totally 100% pink. There's pink but you're not overwhelmed by it.

Say "Hello Kitty!" in these five first board books starring the hugely popular and very cute cat. This little library will introduce small children to some of Hello Kitty's favourite things, from exploring, dressing up and fun and games to her friends and - of course - the colour pink. Bold artwork and chunky pages little ones can turn themselves make this a gentle first learning experience.

The books measure 9cm by 9cm, and are suited to children aged 1 years and upwards.

This set could be handy too if you're going away over the Christmas period. As one reviewer on Amazon says "simple and easy to take with you if you're going on holiday and need something to keep your little angel amused".

Thanks to Sarafan at HUKD!