When Alycia and Sherilyn were younger, my hubby and I spent a lot of money on their toys and books. I was still working then and could still splurge generously on toys for them. Most of their toys were battery-operated, which means we ended up spending more money! Normal batteries did not last long. So we used only alkaline batteries and duracell procell 9V. Each toy ended up costing almost double the amount we spent on it, inclusive of the batteries. For Cassandra, I was wiser. I stopped buying toys as I knew that each toy would probably be touched for a few days or a few weeks (some toys were never touched!) and thereafter, it would ‘expire’ and land in the white toy box or given away again.