If you have one Shopkin in your house, chances are you have quite a few! Because they come in packs that have at least 1 hidden Shopkin, your kids have probably gotten some doubles. Here are some ideas for getting more play value out of these little guys and ways to use doubles and the little containers they come in.
Pile of Shopkins with blind bag containers from seasons 3, 4, and 5.
1.Cupcake Toppers
You can use them to top cupcakes for your child’s cupcakes that they take to school for their birthday or at their party. If you have them for a party you may want to try to use the same color family for all the toppers. They sell packs of color coordinated Shopkins with little furniture if you are looking for a particular color. I found that green was also one of the most popular colors in the 2 packs.
2.Treat Containers
You can also use the shopping baskets (seasons 1-3) and food crates (season 4) from the 2 packs to put cookies or candy in to put at each child’s place at a party table.
Shopkins are great to use as little prizes for kids and season 5 comes as two little backpacks in 1 pack so you can easily split into two different prizes. You can make these little backpacks wearable for fashion dolls.
3.Doll Backpack
Get a piece of elastic, and cut it to about 37cm.
Tie the ends together and string it through the little tab on the side of the backpack.
Then put the tied end of the string through that elastic loop.
Take one side of the elastic and wrap it around the peg on the other side of the backpack.
Take about half of the loop of elastic away from the backpack and tie a knot in it.
Do this on both sides and now you have loops to put the dolls arms through. You may want to tie another knot on each side to shorten the loops so it can fit more securely depending on the size of the doll.
4.Advent Calendar
It seems like you end up with a ton of these bags, so maybe that is why they stopped making them after season 3. If your child has been collecting these, you probably have at least 24 extra to make an advent calendar. Or you can also just make 8 to put very small Hanukkah gifts in.
You can put gold coins, candy, hair clips, jewelry, or of course more Shopkins as little gifts.
5.Shopkin Swap Game
Here is a game that I made to play with Shopkins. It is a color-in version that you can print out and you or your child can color. You can download the template by clicking on the link under the picture.
Game Play
You will need some Shopkins and a die. In my picture you can see I used a large one with the numerals 1-20 on it. You can get these or even sets with 1-6, 1-10, and 1-20 on Amazon. I used these so that children can memorize their numerals while playing the game, but you could use a regular die. If you decide to use dice with numerals, you may want to start with a 1-6 die and then work up to the 1-20. Remember to count each number out loud for each turn. You could also do this for any other board game you have at home. On the board there are a few squares with pictures on them. If your turn ends on one of these squares, you can skip ahead to the place where the large, matching icon points to, but only if your Shopkin is in that category. These are the categories, but you can redefine them if you want:
Music Instruments, clothing and accessories (shoes/hats/purses/dresses), dairy products, things made with an oven, things you use outdoors (sports equipment /gardening supplies), things that use electricity, fruit, vegetables, and cleaning products. I tried to cover most of the Shopkins categories with these, but you can let kids be creative with the classification. For example, pizza could go in the dairy category because it has cheese on it or the oven category because it is made in the oven.
The last type of square is the “Shopkin swap” square. If your turn ends on this you need to exchange the Shopkin you are playing with for another. This will allow some strategy in the game. You can decide if you want to allow swapping with other players. Young children may get upset by this if they are using their favorite one and another player wants to trade with them, but you may decide you want to do that anyway and help them work on sharing.
6.Guess the Shopkin Game
In this game you are feeling the Shopkin in the bag and trying to guess what it is. A lot of adults do this with blind bags so they can get the toy they want, although you can’t do that with Shopkins in the store because they are packaged in the plastic baskets or backpacks. I actually had to do this in a biology class. I had to figure out what animal bone was in a little black bag and what side of the body it came from. You could do this game with the little yellow bags the toys come in, but they are a little see through, and you may not know for sure what it is, which you might want to know if you are doing this for a party game.
You can make little fabric bags and stitch or write a number on them. Sew the bag together leaving one side open. Stitch the last side with a new piece of thread after you put the Shopkin in and then you can reuse the bags if you just cut the seam at the top open. Cut out the different Shopkins that are in the bags from the check list and glue them onto a piece of paper so the kids have a smaller number of Shopkins to choose from. You may need two checklists for this because the Shopkins are listed on both sides of the paper. You can put a little letter in the box, then the kids can put that next a numbered list. All the kids can be working on this at the same time, they just won’t start with bag #1 first. Then at the end you can cut the bags open and see which child got the most correct.
7.Shopkin Necklaces
Shopkins are a soft plastic so you can put “screw eye pin bails” into the top of them quite easily with the help of a pliers to hold the loop part of the pin as you screw it in. You can get these from Amazon. Make sure they have a sharp point at the bottom so you can work them into the Shopkin. Some Shopkins, like Cheeky Cherries, have a loop in them that you can just attach a jump ring to them. I got the plastic chain and all the other little bells, stars and hearts online at Fire Mountain Gems.