We bought our toddler a VTech baby phone when he was about a year old and he loved it. He played with it everywhere. It eventually ended up in the car somehow and helped him deal with long drives. My point being it got a lot of use.

Eventually it stopped working properly. The slider that switches from "music" to "apps" had been misaligned for over a month already and finally the "touchscreen" stopped working. The physical buttons still worked fine.

Since having kids, I've been preparing myself for low quality toys that need to be replaced occasionally. I'm an IT technician and am fairly comfortable dealing with simple electronics and my wife is also very tech-savvy, so we grabbed a screw driver and carefully pulled the toy apart.

I was expecting poor soldering to have caused a loose connection, but after fixing the misaligned slider there were no other issues to be found. After several minutes of fruitless checking, it dawns on us: the batteries are dying.... Apparently, there was enough current to power the buttons and slider, but not the touchscreen.

I've worked in IT for over a decade and forgot what almost amounts to turning it off and on again. Advice I give on a regular basis at work.

We've since had to take apart a Linkimal with a wonky switch and were successful in that endeavor, so I was able to redeem myself.

TLDR: A toy wasn't working properly, so we took it apart only to eventually realize the problem was dying batteries, not mechanical failure. When a toy is acting up, always try replacing the batteries before performing surgery.