I know it would be pretty impossible unless you work for vtech, but does anybody know if a hobbiest could program a program for a vtech toy laptop

I have seen their little toys. I've seen two types: one takes a magnetic strip and the other takes a cartridge. They probably have more, but that's not the kind of electronics I buy.

For the mag strip toys, you could (if you had nothing better to do) get a stripe reader/writer, figure out what is stored on them, reverse engineer the programs, and write new programs with a little trial-and-error.

The ones that take a cartridge could also be reverse engineered, although it would take more hardware resources and a good knowledge of the underlying system.

I can't imagine why anybody would want to do that, though. It would be a lot of work with no big reward, other than the joy that comes with figuring something out.

If all you are looking for is cheap hardware you can do stuff with, there are tons of 5-year-old PDAs that can be bought on ebay and elsewhere for (basically) the cost of shipping.