This problem is huge for us -- my mother has gone super pop-culture in her empty-nest struggle, and lots of my ILs live by the "you need Baby Einstein and excersaucers to SURVIVE!" philosophy, so we get a lot of stuff in our tiny little apartment, and we can't afford to buy the nice wooden toys that will actually last to the next child.
With my mom, when she was visiting (since she LOVES to shop) I picked out the nice wooden baby toys at the shop and talked about why DS likes them & how much they help him developmentally, etc, etc, and just shared the knowledge about them in an open way. I think part of the "snobby" label we get is b/c we get defensive against the commercial culture and don't just treat our family like equally understanding adults.... That said, they often still buy the noisy plastic junk.
So then I had a
brilliant idea! (haha) We planned to pick a time that was well enough after a holiday/gift-giving time that nobody would feel insulted or told off about a recently-given gift, but early enough to intervene in the next gift-shopping trip, and I made an Amazon "Wish List" full of age-appropriate and super-crunchy toys (threw in a couple of organic onesies and make-your-own-baby-food gear, too, just to give people the idea
that we'd love to buy for DS if we could afford it. Since we live far away from all our family (and since my mom
loves online shopping) we planned to pitch it as a sort of practical "hey guys this is what we're looking for for DS now that he's ____ old," and I also just put stuff on there that I'm planning to buy myself once the paycheck comes in. I haven't sent out a note to my dad or MIL yet, but I told my mom about it and she thought it was great -- now she knows what size he's wearing, etc., and she told me to keep it updated so she can check back when she's thinking of buying gifts. I figure that even if we never get anything on the list, at least it will give them an idea of what we're into, since most of them are old-school and have no idea that you don't have to buy the shiny thing on the end-cap at Toys-R-Us. So if you give yourself a good amount of lead time, and just phrase it as a practical reference tool for them to check in on when(if)ever they feel like it, that may be a good way to give a gentle hint w/o having to stamp something on the invites.
Then again ... I did have a friend who's BIL was always trying to buy her kids noisy, singing, "educational" toys and it was always a bone of contention (and I have a feeling she's not afraid to speak up no matter what!). So one day when he asked her if the boys would like one of those talking Alphabet computer things that mechanically shouts the alphabet and encouraging words at your child whenever they hit the buttons (ykwim) and she gently but very honestly said "no," then he just looked at her, genuinely worried for her children, and said, "But how will they learn the alphabet?"
