Awesome Toys and Gifts for 8 Year Old Boys

Looking for cool gifts for your 8 year old boys? Look no further. Here’s a great list of gifts, games, books, and toys that your 8 year old boys will be happy to receive for Christmas or another holiday such as a birthday. Scroll down to see all the cool ideas.

I love giving gifts, and my kids circle all the magazines and make long lists — so that I can pick exactly what they want. To do research about boy gifts, I ask my friends and research online. I hope you’ll find exactly the perfect gift ideas that will work for your 8 year old boy.

You Might Also Like:

Toy & Book Gift Guide for Kids

All book recommendations for 8-year olds

Activity Books for Ages 5 – 8

Craft and STEM Activity Kits for Kids

Best Gifts for 8 Year Old Boys

Deduckto
Kids love this strategy game where you’ll use deduction to put together the clues (animal, disguise, and location) to figure out your secret suspect!

Things in the Basement by Ben Hatke
I adore this beautifully drawn and narrated adventure set in the world of…the basement! Milo searches for it in the basement for a pink sock. The basement leads Milo to another basement, and then another basement, and to a whole labyrinth of basement worlds. He befriends a friendly skull named Chuckles, an eyeball creature named Weepie, and a ghost named Belle, rescuing his friends from the Gobbler and returning home with the pink sock.

LEGO Gel Pen & Minifigure

LEGO Deep Sea Explorer
Build your own submarine and get jellyfish, fish, 6 explorers, a skeleton, and more.

Squishmallows 8-Inch Red Panda
Meet Cici, an adorable red panda!

Thames & Kosmos Glow in the Dark T Rex Excavation Kit
Excavate your own glow-in-the-dark Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton model. This dangerous prehistoric giant comes to life when you excavate its bones with a hammer and chisel and assemble them into a skeleton. The skeleton lets you reenact prehistoric adventures or surprise your friends with its glowing effect when the lights are off. The kit includes 13 skeleton pieces buried in a plaster block, excavation tools, and a descriptive manual.

LEGO Creator 3 in 1 T Rex
Make three different dinosaurs — a pterodactyl, a triceratops, and a t.rex with the LEGO blocks in this kit!

Gamewright Butts on Things
Collect the most matches to win!

Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty Dolphin Dance
The best thing about this cool, glittery, stretchable, sculptable putty is it’s fun for ALL AGES! Not only do little kids enjoy playing with it for fine motor skills and creativity, but big kids use it for focus and sensory exploration.

Cat Kid Comic Club by Dav Pilkey
Totally hilarious and written by the author of Dog Man! Cat Kid teaches a class for the tadpoles about making comic books…which doesn’t go well until the tadpoles get excited about failure and start writing and drawing. If you like a lot of silliness (including potty humor) with great messages about writing, creativity, and persistence, read this book next.

KLUTZ Gemstone & Dig Kit
Use the chisel and hammer to find 12 birthstones and 18 more rocks. This kit includes a 32-page book of information and ideas!

Double Loop Stunt Arena
Stage your own stunts in this 598-piece building set with 2 stunt bikes, 7 minifigures, and a stunt area with a snake loop.

Lego Super Mario Adventures
Kids get a chance to build their very own Super Mario Bros. course with this awesome LEGO set that comes with its very own Mario figure!

Puzzlooies Space Cats to the Rescue by Russell Ginns and Jonathan Maier, illustrated by Kristen Terrana-Hollis
Kids will love this fun, interactive, and silly adventure story with lots of illustrations, jokes, and puzzles. They’ll have to read the chapters, solve the puzzles, and pay close attention to the mysterious messages and clues. In this story, an asteroid is about to hit Earth! The problem (besides the asteroid) is that the astronauts who are supposed to defend the Earth have food poisoning. Who can help instead? How about cat-stronauts?

Reading Journal for Kids
With 90 pages of appealing, easy-to-use activities and diary entries, children get to record and evaluate the books they are reading…and create a treasured memory keepsake.

BrainBolt Memory Game
A light-up memory game from Educational Insights that will challenge your 8 year old boys to remember the light sequence and see how long you can remember it correctly! (For one or two players.)

First Cat in Space by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Shawn Harris
Absurdly hysterical, this is a bizarrely perfect adventure in space! When rats eat a second of the moon, the world’s leaders send their secret weapon– a cat and a stowaway toenail-clipping robot. It’s all bizarre and hilarious and wonderful.

LEGO Super Mario Donkey Kong’s Tree House
This set lets you build a tree house for Donkey Kong plus you will get fun accessories.

Planet Omar by Zanib Mian
One of the best things about Omar is his HUGE imagination! In fact, he faces his new experiences in life with a rich, creative mind filled with dragons, Ferraris, and zombie aliens. He uses his imagination to deal with moving, starting a new school, making friends, and dealing with racism. I love the playful writing, whimsical illustrations, and rich Pakistani-American culture in this beginning chapter book.

Ooze Labs Chemistry Station Science Experiment Kit
This educational chemistry set is perfect for children who love doing their own experiments and want to create something colorful, slimy, or fizzy in their very own lab!

Switch Lite
This handheld version of the Nintendo Switch is the perfect gift when it comes to price and size for any kid looking for an awesome game console!

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
One of the most popular book series ever, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, shares the hilarious story of Greg, in his own words and drawings. Life in middle school is not easy. And Greg is here to prove it! One thing you’ll notice about these books is that kids will read them more than once which is great if you have them all. This boxed set makes a great gift because kids often read these books multiple times over.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Battle Academy
Love Pokemon? This game at the Battle Academy will teach you everything Pokemon. This board game gives you 60 cards, a board, damage counters, and a coin plus codes for online play.

Alien Slime Lab
Get messy as you mix up batches of unidentified “alien” slime and conduct tests on them to analyze and investigate their special properties. Real science and playful science fiction come together in this wacky, activity-filled kit! For example, conduct viscosity tests on the slime, dissect it with tweezers and a plastic scalpel, cut out a brain shape, Stamp it with an alien head, and add eyes to your Alien slime! (Non-toxic.)

Kindle Kids
Perfect for growing readers, this Kindle Kids Edition offers a black-and-white glare-free display. It includes many popular book series including Harry Potter and more!

Stomp Rocket
Stop on the rocket and watch it soar 20 stories high!

Shifting Stones
We love this fun engaging strategy game that will develop your boys’ visual/spatial skills and long-term planning.

Who Would Win? Whale vs. Giant Squid by Jerry Pallotta, illustrated by Rob Bolster
In this book pitting two ocean carnivores against each other, kids learn facts about the sperm whale and the giant squid then read an imagined story where these two creatures face-off. Can you predict who will win? 3rd grade boys LOVE this series.

Plus Plus Horse
Interlocking cubes fit together to make a horse. Kids love these clever puzzles!

Ninja Kid: From Nerd to Ninja by Anh Do
FUNNY / ILLUSTRATED
Nelson is a nerdy and likable main character who wakes up on his 10th birthday with perfect vision and… ninja moves! (How cool is that?) His mum and grandma explain that like his missing fisherman dad before him, Nelson is the LAST ninja in the world — and he’s actually destined to SAVE the world. Action-packed, funny, appealing illustrations, and likable characters, this book has it all. You won’t want to stop with book one either because there’s a bit of a cliffhanger…

Check the Oven
A hilarious game of bluffing where kids develop confidence and solid math skills! Players use strategy, humor, and logic to accumulate cards adding to 12.

Dog Man by Dav Pinkey
Weird. Quirky. Funny. I think all three describe this new graphic novel from the creator of Captain Underpants. In the first story, a police officer and a dog are joined together — the top from the dog, the bottom from the officer to make: Dog Man. Dog Man solves crimes and has adventures, the likes of which will entertain 8-year-old readers for hours.

Kanoodle 3D Puzzle Game for Kids
Kanoodle includes 200 logical thinking puzzles from basic to deviously difficult, there are hundreds of possible combinations, but only one correct answer. Perfect for enhancing problem-solving, critical thinking, and strategic thinking skills.

Gravity Maze
Get your kids hooked on an engaging game requiring problem-solving, thinking, and visual-spatial strategy! The goal of the 1-player Gravity Maze game is to figure out how to build a working marble run using the colored translucent plastic towers. We love and highly recommend this game!

Wireless Headphones
These aren’t just highly rated, they’re really a good price, too! We also love that they have good sound, LED lights, and volume control.

I Survived by Lauren Tarshis
Excellent, fast-paced adventures set during significant historical events! Your kids will zip through the adventures while learning about history. The books are always about a young person trying to survive the book’s historically important, life-changing events such as Pompeii, the Titanic, Pearl Harbor, or the Battle of Gettysburg.

RushHour Traffic Jam Logic Game
Not only does this game provide hours of strategy and problem solving but it’s FUN to accomplish these tricky puzzles. We are big fans.

Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel
In a word: hilarious. Kids think Bad Kitty is very naughty but, oh so funny. These chapter books are addictive to read and fun to reread. Plus, they’re illustrated with only minimal text on every page. What are they about? Bad Kitty –a cat with an attitude — and all her misadventures.

Star Wars Jedi Academy by Jeffrey Brown
SCI- FI (series!)
Calling all Star Wars fans! Engaging from the first page, this is a relatable graphic novel adventure story about a young boy, Roan, who dreams of becoming a pilot . . . but gets into Jedi school instead. He’s the oldest new student; everyone else started long before him. Roan has ups and downs, as one does at a new school, but he finds his place at the school and new friends. Highly recommended!

The Ultimate Book of Sharks (National Geographic Kids) by Brian Skerry
Gorgeous photographs, eye-catching displays, and tons of informational insets make this book a must-own for shark lovers. Kids will read about different shark species, shark life cycles, myths vs. reality, and shark fossils.

Just Joking Jumbo by National Geographic Kids
Holy Smokes! Your eight year old kids will love this book. It’s packed full of awesome jokes and photographs; it’s hefty and impossible not to love. Fun facts added throughout make it extra interesting.

Kandoodle Jr.
My kids and I think these 1 player logic puzzles are so much fun! Probably because you get the pieces to manipulate and can choose your level from easy to challenging. The game lets you get the hang of the strategy with the easy levels and then you progress to more difficult puzzles. A bonus is this is a great on-the-go activity since it comes in a nifty carrying case.

Ultimate Weird But True! by National Geographic Kids
We just got a review copy in the mail yesterday, and my daughter spent the next MILLION YEARS, or perhaps an hour, reading it to me. All the crazy and wild facts. They are pretty interesting. I love that it gets her reading and learning about the STEM topics and world!!

Rat-a-tat-Cat
The goal is to get your four cards to add up to the lowest score. You’re dealt four cards face down and can only peek at the cards on the edges. Draw and strategize if you will replace your cards or keep them. When you think you have the lowest score, say “rat-a-tat-cat” and everyone must show their cards and add up their scores. Somehow my youngest daughter ALWAYS wins this game. (Might be why she loves it so much!) It’s really fun and only takes around 10 minutes to play one game.

Pass the Pigs
This is my husband’s favorite game to play with the kids. This Pass the Pigs classic party game consists of 2 pigs you use as dice, pad, 2 pencils and carrying case. Roll them as many times as you dare on your turn to score points. Just don’t role a “pig out” or an “oinker”. The first person to 100 points wins.

Who Would Win? by Jerry Pallotta
NONFICTION
Kids can’t get enough of the Who Would Win? books that pit two animals against each other. First, you’ll learn facts about one animal, then you’ll learn about the other, and compare the two as you learn about each. Finally, read what happens when these two creatures face-off. Can you predict who will win?