'How I got an expensive kids' toy favourite for a rock bottom price'

Build a Bear Workshop shop from the front
-Credit: (Image: Derby Telegraph)


Build-a-Bear Workshop is something kids love. If you've never been, it's a toy shop with a difference because you don't just get to pick a teddy, but to customise it with all your favourite things and help build it from scratch in store.

You select your teddy and then go through the stages, with the super friendly staff helping your little one bring their dream teddy to life. You pick the casing, then they get to get involved with stuffing them and they get to check the firmness of their teddy too. The creator gets to pick a heart (and then make a wish) and you can even put a voice inside it with a whole range of options of what your bear will say.

There are outfits and accessories and once your bear looks the part, you can create a birth certificate especially for them. It's not just a toy shop, but an interactive experience which kids absolutely love.

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The offering has expanded in recent years and you can get your own personalised version of iconic brands including Star Wars, Pokemon, Blippi, Hello Kitty, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Bluey. You can dress your bear in a spa robe set, a Gandalf costume, in hospital scrubs, and don't forget the shoes and hats, gloves, and scarves too.

However, it comes at a price. Teddies are priced from upwards of £20, and accessories soon add up. A Blippi costume, is, for example, £17.50 and a fairy flower crown £4, while the matching dress is another £14.50. A teddy t-shirt is somewhere around the £5 mark. Recording your own voice is £7 extra.

But there's a little known way you can get the Build-a-Bear Workshop experience for a fraction of the price - and it doubles as a birthday present. Win win!

The specially-designed birthday bear normally costs £14 but if you visit in store in their birthday month - the whole month - you just pay in pounds their age, so if your kid is two, you can get a teddy for £2, if they are three, £3 and so on. For money-saving tips, sign up to our Money newsletter here

A brown teddy bear with happy birthday branding
The birthday Build-a-Bear we got at the Cardiff store

The bear has the Build-a-Bear pawprint and its feet are patterned with birthday material. They still get to stuff them, and name them too.

The Build-a-Bear website says you need to be a member of their bonus club to get the deal, but that is free to sign to up. However, when I did this deal, they didn't ask me to sign up. We were offered to upgrade to a package which included an outfit and voice, and that would have made the total cost £20 but there was no pressure to do it. There was also no need to provide any proof of it being a birthday but the staff made sure it was a lovely experience letting my older child take part too to feel included.

Bargain!