So Saturday I spent the day touring the Toy Fair showrooms of both
Mattel (which owns Fisher-Price, among others) and Hasbro (which owns
Playskool, among others). The two companies are the first and second
largest toy manufacturers in the world, respectively. In the interest
of deflecting the full-frontal assault of the PR pit bulls from both
companies, I tagged along with Claire Green (president of the Parents Choice Foundation) and Wendy Smolen (a consultant and Nick Jr. and Parenting magazine alumna, among others).
I'll begin by saying that—forgive me—I view the $22 billion toy
industry with some cynicism. Not always, my thinking goes, do they
approach our children with the noblest of intent. Call me crazy, I
know. I'm not naive—I know that companies need to make money. But the
movie tie-ins and licensing proliferation seem to be reaching
unprecedented levels of madness, often at the expense of design and
ingenuity. Does every toy that our kids play with need to come
with some backstory? Do our kids need toys to come with prewritten
scripts that all but dictate to them how they're supposed to play with
their toys? Am I wrong, or are we shortchanging their imaginations?
Ugh. And grr. Bearing that in mind, here are the high- and low-lights, roughly in order of toy seen:
HASBRO
Kota the Triceratops is an astonishing piece of
technology—one that's already getting its share of publicity. The
40-inch long "life-sized" baby dino is big enough for your 3-year-old
to sit on. It has 11 sensors located throughout its body—when you pet
its head or tickle its horns, Kota snorts and snuffles affectionately.
The thing is astonishingly cool but ... once your child has played with
it for 20 minutes, what's the second act? It makes adorable noises and
facial expressions, sure, but after a few vigorous workouts, the kid
will have seen it all. It's a $300 piece of furniture. What 5-year-old
is going to keep playing with it once the novelty is gone?
They're also unveiling a similarly-pointless animatronic dog, Biscuit. The
$180 life-sized Golden Retriever obeys six voice commands, moves his
head and ears, blinks his eyes, wags his tail and barks. Again: cute,
but another piece of furniture—no real room that I can see for your
child's imagination to take over.
The Glide 2 Ride bike is a $100 bicycle without
pedals—perfect for the not-quite-ready-for-training-wheels set. I've
seen kids darting around on very expensive wooden variations of these
in Brooklyn, pushing off the ground to propel their two-wheelers along.
But the Glide 2 Ride allows parents to screw on pedals when the child
has got the balance thing down and is ready to get those feet off the
ground.
The $75 U-Dance gaming system will teach your unfunky kid how
to get up for the downstroke. A sensor plugged into your TV reads the
receivers strapped onto your feet. The movements of your child's feet
are replicated as footprints on the television—no dance mats required.
The system comes equipped with 12 songs—a bit paltry—and three
difficulty levels, so when your child has nailed the Motown-moves of
the Jackson 5, she can graduate to a full-speed C+C Music Factory hip
hop workout. U-Dance is probably the first viable threat to Dance Dance
Revolution. Unfortunately, that means the C+C Music Factory
will feature in your life.
The perennially cool Easy Bake Oven (maybe we should say "cool again," now that it isn't giving kids burns
any more) is turning 45 this year. Happy birthday, Easy Bake ... here's
a cake I made with, well, you. I tarted it up with one of your
decorating pens.
The $20 'Jive Pod' plugs into your portable MP3 player. Its
touchpad lights up and, like the U-Dance system, your child follows the
beat ... only with her thumbs. It's like Simon Says with a backbeat.
Multiple friends can plug in and play along too. Hasbro is pitching it
as "snack gaming" for your tween (8-12)—a cute sound-byte, sure, but
one that fairly accurately describes the toy it's applied to.
What's cooler than Nerf? The new Nerf-N-Strike for the
Nintendo Wii and DS systems. The toy doubles as a dart gun and a
functional Wii controller—simply pop out the Nerf gun's barrel and
replace it with the Wiimote and you go from real-life shooting to
virtual dartgun.
MATTEL
We saw fewer toys that we liked at Mattel, frankly. It was rather
dispiriting. You don't need us to tell you about Barbie. Mattel is
incorporating—with mixed success—technology across its Barbie line.
Fine. At Toy Fair, I found myself more impressed by the Polly Pocket Pop N Swap. Polly Pocket is a miniature doll (that recently had its own recall problems).
The new model Mattel unveiled at Toy Fair allows girls to pop off
Polly's head and swap it onto a new torso—or swap new legs onto a given
Polly body. Seeing a trough of Polly heads and legless trunks was
unsettling, but the doll clearly invites your child to use her
imagination in mixing and matching doll-parts. Where Mattel's
imagination utterly failed was on the diversity front—all of the Polly
dolls are white. Boxes of the new swappable Polly will run from $10 to
$20.
Hot Wheels are rad. They were rad when I was growing up and they're rad today. The new Trick Tracks
let kids build Hot Wheels stunts. For $10 to $40 a Trick Tracks set
comes with one elaborate Hot Wheels stunt (a loop, a teeter-totter or a
catapult). Where it gets cool is when you attach sets to each other to
create elaborate Rube Goldbergian stunt car contraptions.
The $30 Pictionary Man brings the 2-D boardgame into the 3-D
world with a dry-erase humanoid figure. Instead of drawing on (and
wasting) paper, players draw their clues directly onto the Pilsbury
Doughboy-looking figure. It comes with a couple of other props as well,
so if you're supposed to draw, say, a surfer, give him board-shorts and
draw a surfboard onto one of the other dry-erase pieces.
Mattel is also upping its animatronic ante with both the D-REX Dinosaur and Elmo Live. I
don't know about your gastrointestinal fortitude when it comes to all
things Elmo, but the new doll certainly appears to be as useless as it
is annoying. Sure, it'll be a huge, monster "Mommy-I-need-it" hit. The
semi-lifelike doll talks, tells "jokes" and stories, all while
gesticulating wildly. It barely invites active play—sure, sensors on
its body will react to your child's touch. But in the end there's
little for your kid to do other than turn it on and watch. This isn't
something you play with, it's a living room extension of a television
character. Same goes for the D-Rex, a dinosaur that is almost nifty
enough replace your household pet. It does do cool stuff, but barely
provides your child with opportunities to play in return. He can pet it
and play tug of war with it, but after an hour I'd be willing to bet
he's bored.
The Computer Cool School seems like a
potentially fun way for preschoolers to prepare for class: plug the
tot-friendly keyboard into your computer and let your child play fun
learning games. The coolest feature is a touch pad that lets your child
trace letters and watch them appear on the screen. It seems like a
decent starter-desktop for your little Bill Gates.
The Laugh & Learn Smart Bounce & Spin Pony plugs into the TV via a wireless device. Your 1-3 year old is placed in the saddle and encouraged to bounce up and down, spin and roll the handle bars. The
more baby interacts, the more happens on the TV screen. It's gaming for
your 1-year-old, and frankly the graphics kind of stink. The American
Academy of Pediatrics would prefer it if you didn't stick your child in
front of a screen of any sort before he or she turns 2. And this toy is
hardly impressive enough to warrant ignoring that sound advice.
