The thing I dislike most about Tonies is that they don't licence the original recordings for lots of the movie/TV themed characters.
They licence the songs and then record them in-house and goodness me some of them are disappointing if you are familiar with the real soundtracks. The Moana one has the same two singers doing impressions of every character.
You might want to check out https://www.hoerbert.com. This is a remarkably well-built, low-tech alternative. It is somewhat primitive, but the company seems willing to indulge customers who are technically inclined.
As an adjacent thought on the Hörbert device:
Since we live very far away from family (transatlantic flight), we decided to have our relatives record themselves reading books for our kids. They shared the audio files over Google Drive, and we could load up the audio files onto the Hörbert device so that our kids could listen to their custom audio books whenever they wanted. It provided a nice way to help the kids feel connected with the grandparents and such. With the Hörbert, all that involved was ejecting the SDK card and amending its contents on a normal computer.
We have the "Jooki Box" in use since its inception (the version before the current one), and it's a pretty good substitute. Allows to connect figurines to Spotify playlists, so if you have a Spotify Family subscription, you have a huge number of songs and audiobooks for kids at your fingertips with no additional cost.
The original box itself was way more expensive than the Toniebox, like double the price, but I think they've made it considerably cheaper when they released the second hardware version of it. And the original box still works until today, continues to be supported by their app and has already been built in a very sturdy way (I've opened it up once to add magnets inside, so the figurines stick on it, which they normally don't do - that's the one thing the Toniebox people got right).
It seems the company behind this product has gone out of business and the product itself is no longer sold (their e-commerce site is still up, but the shop is empty)?
Which is a bummer, as I went looking after your comment - Toniebox is great but I agree it feels overpriced on the content side (perhaps it isn’t, if their competitor couldn’t make the business model work…)
I got ours all used in bundles. The box itself is rather repairable (broken silicone ears, dead sd card, dead battery) and there are sometimes very good deals on Kleinanzeigen classified ads.
Also what helps: resale value is great, so after the Tonies have had their time and your kids become older... just sell them off.
I can vouch for the Yoto. We make our own cards and update them with new books and music whenever we want. You can add a custom icon that displays for each track.
My children loved to listen on audio books on CDs (can be rented from libraries or bought for cheap) or on an old 1st gen iPod.