Whirli

Paused.The website says new subscriptions are paused for now.

What's in the box: A box of preloved branded toys that the family chooses using tokens, such as activity tables, musical toys, walkers or building sets.

Whirli is not operating normally right now. Its website says new subscriptions are paused for now, so you cannot sign up at the moment. When it ran, Whirli was a UK toy rental subscription for children aged roughly 0 to 8. Members chose one of four plans and got tokens to spend on building a box from a catalogue of preloved toys. Whirli says it handpicked toys for playability and sorted them by age and by play style, such as pretend, building, sensory, active, messy and creative play. Families could keep toys for as long as they liked, then send them back for new tokens to spend on something different. The catalogue was mostly familiar brands such as Melissa & Doug, Hape, Fisher Price, VTech, Little Tikes and Mega Bloks, with items like activity tables, baby walkers, musical toys and building sets. Besides renting, the site also let families buy toys and sell toys back for credit, and it presented the whole model as a way to reuse toys and cut waste. Some popular items were on a waitlist, so you could not always get every toy you wanted. With new subscriptions paused, it is unclear when or whether the service will reopen, and any pricing or offers still on the site may be out of date.