Some are even said to hide them inside soft toys so that patients can take them secretly.

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Throughout the day, pupils and people living nearby have been leaving flowers, soft toys and balloons outside the school gates.

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Flowers, tributes, candles and soft toys were placed outside the family's semi-detached house and a memorial was held following a private funeral.

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Operation Christmas Child, which has been running since 1991, invites people to fill a shoebox with presents such as colouring books, balls and soft toys.

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The 20 trees, the plethora of soft toys and all the other reminders of a broken Christmas seem to tell some that that is no longer the case and that it may be more dangerous leaving the subject alone.

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At almost the same time, and apparently by entire coincidence, stuffed bears were also being introduced to Germany, where they were first manufactured by Margarete Steiff, who'd been making soft toys since the 1880s, and who'd recently been joined in the business by her nephew Richard.

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If Willy Wonka had had a soft spot for toys rather than sweets, his factory would have looked a lot like this museum.

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She said the hardest things to recycle were soft plastic such as packaging contaminated with food as well as hard plastic such as broken toys that no one would want.

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