Kidzstory
Gift guide

Unicorn gifts stop working once the unicorn is only a print on the front

A unicorn-obsessed child usually owns the decorated version of everything already. What still lands gives the unicorn a name, a temper and something to do.

The unicorn phase is real, and the shops worked that out some years ago. Almost every category a small child touches now has a unicorn edition, which means the one thing you can be confident of is that they own a dozen. The gifts that still register are the ones where the unicorn is a character rather than a decoration applied to an object.

Updated August 2026

The real question

They own the print already, so the character is what is scarce

Walk one supermarket aisle and count: lunch boxes, socks, toothbrushes, yoghurt pots, wrapping paper, slime. The unicorn has been printed onto nearly every object a child under eight encounters, and that has an odd consequence — the interest is entirely genuine, but the market's answer to it has stopped carrying any information. Handing over a unicorn-decorated version of something they already own says nothing about that particular child, and by around six most of them can tell. Meanwhile the part they are actually playing with goes unfed. Pretend play runs on characters: a unicorn with a name, a temperament and a problem earns hours, while a unicorn printed on a pencil case earns a glance.

  • Before buying anything, count what is in the bedroom. The usual finding is a shelf of decorated objects and not one unicorn the child can name, describe or tell you a single event about. The gap is narrative, not stock.
  • Craft kits split cleanly. The ones ending in a usable object — a felted figure, a clay model, a sewn toy — get finished and kept. The ones ending in a tray of glue and loose glitter get abandoned around the halfway point, and the mess outlives the interest.
  • Riding stables commonly take children from about four on a lead rein, in half-hour sessions, with hat and boots included in the price. It is the closest available thing to the actual animal, and it costs roughly what two decorated plastic toys cost.
  • A glass prism is the real version of the rainbow they keep drawing. Held in a sunlit window it throws spectra across a whole room, it needs no batteries, and unlike almost everything else here it is still interesting to a ten-year-old.
7 that work

What to actually get

How long have you got?

All 7 options.

  1. A unicorn story where the unicorn does something

    $8–15

    A picture book or short chapter series in which the unicorn is the main character and has a problem to solve.

    A few days

    Most unicorn books are colouring pages with a plot bolted on. The ones worth owning give the creature a personality and something at stake, which is what makes a child ask for the same book fourteen nights running. An independent bookshop will pick one if you describe the child and the age; it is a better recommendation than any listing page produces.

  2. A personalized unicorn adventure with them in it

    $6.99

    An illustrated book built around one named child, who meets the unicorn and goes somewhere with it.

    Ready tonight

    This is the one unicorn object in the house that could not have been bought for anyone else, which is the whole difficulty this page is about. It also gives the creature the role it has been missing: a companion in a story that belongs to this child. Delivered as a printable PDF a few minutes after ordering, so it can be printed and read tonight.

  3. A needle-felting or air-dry clay kit

    $15–35

    Wool and a felting needle, or clay and paints, with enough material to make a unicorn from scratch.

    A few days

    At the end there is a thing they made, which changes how it is treated — home-made animals get names, get carried about and survive several house moves. Felting needles are genuinely sharp, so this suits about seven upwards or a younger child working alongside an adult; clay has no such limit and dries overnight on a windowsill.

  4. A taster riding lesson on the lead rein

    $25–60

    A single half-hour session at a local stable, usually with hat and boots provided.

    Needs a week or more

    Horses are large, warm and breathing, and thirty minutes with one reorganises the whole interest for a lot of children. Book a taster rather than a term: some children come back radiant and want the next twelve, others find the size of the animal a great deal more than they bargained for, and both answers are useful to have.

  5. A glass prism or a bevelled suncatcher

    $8–20

    A hand-sized triangular prism, or a faceted crystal on a length of cord for the window.

    A few days

    Children in this phase draw rainbows constantly, and most have never made one themselves. A prism in morning sun scatters colour across the ceiling, the floor and their own arms, and they will move it around the house for weeks working out where the light comes from. Small, cheap, and the least disposable object on this list.

  6. A fantasy read-aloud with no unicorn in it

    $8–15

    An illustrated chapter book with magic, a quest and a creature of some other kind, read a chapter at a time.

    A few days

    The unicorn is a doorway into a much larger appetite for the impossible, and that appetite outlasts the horn by years. Reading aloud lets you pitch a book a level or two beyond what they could manage alone, which is where the good material sits. Choose something with a map in the front; children in this phase study maps.

  7. A sketchbook and pens in the right colours

    $12–30

    A bound blank book plus metallic and pastel pens, kept together as one gift.

    A few days

    This child is already drawing unicorns on every scrap of paper in the house. A book with a spine turns loose drawings into a collection they revisit and improve, and pens that actually produce gold and pale lilac remove the daily complaint that the colours are wrong. It costs little and it gets used every day, which few unicorn gifts manage.

6 of these are nothing to do with us — we make the book, and say so where it appears.

Skip these

Gifts that vanish into the pile they already have

  • One more decorated object. The tenth unicorn cup, the fourth backpack, another set of socks. These are perfectly nice and they are also invisible on arrival, because the child stopped registering the print some time ago.
  • Glitter kits with no product at the end. Loose glitter travels through a house for months, the activity is over in twenty minutes, and nothing survives it except the vacuum cleaner's opinion of the whole business.
  • A collector's figurine that has to live on a high shelf. A unicorn a child is not allowed to touch is a decoration for the adult who chose it, and children read that distinction accurately and immediately.
  • Themed sweets and baking sets as the main present. They are enjoyable and gone the same weekend, which makes them an excellent stocking extra and a disappointing centrepiece for a birthday.

See it with their name on it

Type a name. That is roughly what lands in your inbox — except the child inside the book looks like them too.

A dinosaur adventure — sample Kidzstory cover art

… and the Valley of Giants

starring your child

Sample artwork — your book is drawn fresh

Asked a lot

Questions people actually ask

How do you buy something unicorn-themed that is not just more merchandise?

Apply one test: could this have been bought for any unicorn-liking child in the country without a moment's thought? If yes, it is decoration. What passes the test is anything giving the creature a role — a story with a plot, a figure they made themselves, a book with their own name inside it — or anything feeding the interest underneath, which is usually horses, rainbows and magic rather than the horn specifically.

When does the unicorn phase end?

It varies, but it tends to run strongest somewhere between four and seven and thin out around eight or nine, often as classmates start noticing what everyone else likes. It rarely stops cleanly. What usually happens is that it broadens into fantasy generally: dragons, myths, longer books with maps. That is worth planning for. Gifts that point outward from the unicorn tend to survive the transition, while gifts that are only the unicorn do not.

They own every unicorn toy that exists. What now?

Move sideways instead of buying deeper. The neighbouring territories are real horses, rainbows and light, mythical creatures in general, and stories with quests in them. A stable visit, a prism, a book of myths from somewhere unfamiliar, a sketchbook to draw properly in — each of these connects to what they already love without adding another item to a collection that has stopped growing in any meaningful way.

Is a riding lesson too big a jump for a young child?

Usually not, provided you book a taster session rather than committing to a term. Lead-rein lessons start around four at many stables: an instructor walks the pony, the child sits and steers a little, and the whole thing lasts half an hour. Ask what the stable provides so you are not buying a hat and boots for a single session, and warn the child that horses are much bigger up close than in the drawings.

A book with their name in it, tonight

Pick a hero and a world. Kidzstory writes and illustrates a picture book starring your child, and sends it as a PDF you can print and wrap the same evening.

Prices are what these typically cost, not quotes. Delivery cutoffs vary by retailer and country — always go by the date on the seller’s own page. Markdown version.