Well, my two daughters had received free plastic piggy banks from our local credit union as a gift to start a savings account. My oldest dropped hers and split it in two. I searched for a piggy bank that I thought would withstand a drop or two and found piggy banks by Mary Meyer on http://www.amazon.com/. They are 6″ in size. The description off of amazon.com makes it sound like the Mary Meyer company tries to reuse and recycle as much as possible so I am not sure if banks are completely or partially made of recycled materials.
These little piggys are plush on the outside with a plastic containment inside for cash and coins. They are also very colorful and equipped with their own cork-screw piggy tail. Their bottoms have a screwable plastic lid to remove money and be able to reuse over and over. I just got the piggy banks earlier this month and my girls have already dropped them a few times. No spillage of contents and the banks are still usable.
Shown from left to right in paize, dazey, and mango monkey
Showing the top slot
The cute little tails
Kind of blurry, but trying to show the stitching issue on my son’s bank
I ordered three Mary Meyer Piggy Banks off of http://www.amazon.com/. My children all wanted different colors and they vary slightly in price off the website, but all around $9-11 each with free shipping if over a eligible $25 order.
The only downfall was with my son’s piggy bank, which is the orange and yellow striped bank. It may be hard to tell from the pictures, but two legs on the same side had loose stitches and there was a visible blob of glue near the plastic opener on the bottom. So, just cosmetic issues. The other two banks were fine. My son’s had an embroidered monkey on the side and so that one was the most at $10.98. The other two were just printed patterns. There were fewer to select from that were boy friendly colors versus for the girls on Amazon.
Mary Meyer has also a line plush animals that look very cute.
Update July 2011: Well, my 4-year-old had managed to break a tab off the removable cap on the bottom by twisting very hard on it. I contacted Mary Meyer by e-mail and Peggy Nolan was kind enough to send me a replacement part, plus two more caps. She informed me that they were aware of some issues with the piggy bank that my son had gotten and thought they were all pulled before distribution. Peggy also sent me a bank with the errors corrected at no charge too. Thank you Peggy!
