The items I wanted to keep were mostly either silly figures of animals I like (old-school dinosaurs, etc), or creative stuff like Bionicles. In fact, I took home the Bionicles and spent a few weekends actually playing with them, creating new figures. I'm certainly not neurotypical, but I feel that a decent barometer for toys that will truly engage a child is "Could a creative adult also enjoy this?"
I have some young children in my life and agree the landscape of toys-and-their-ads is insane these days. Especially with the crisp unboxing videos, it's so hard not to want to get the weird (and, truthfully, often quite creative, on the designer's part) stuff that's coming out. I sympathize with parents; it's never going to be easy to say no even once you've identified that a badly desired toy is actually going to be a waste of money 6 hours after purchase.