Today I went to Toys R Us in Times Square, FAO Schwartz on 58th St. & 5th Ave., and the Discovery Channel Store in Grand Central. Here are the toys that struck my interest, and some observations:
This AquaPets toy is amazingly simple. A miniature figure floats in water. It’s two arms are attached with fishing wire to the base. Pressing one of the buttons causes the fishing wires to alternately yank the arms so that the figure looks like it dances in the water. Somehow fun to watch.
Here is a flying saucer-like thing. You point the infra-red gun at it, and it spins and flies upward. Fun to watch, but doesn’t move side-to-side.
Classic lazertag from Hasbro, but with wireless radio headset walkie talkies. The box seems to emphasize the “900MHz” radios more than the guns. Interesting from a marketing perspective.
The famous Robosapien robot from Wow Wee. The interesting thing to me again was the emphasis on tech specs. In this case, it’s the “Fully Articulated Motion” that caught my attention.
This is the iQuest, a learning tool from Leapfrog. The cartridges hold study guides based on hundreds of actual school textbooks. Blank cartridges can be filled with content downloaded from the Internet onto the “Mind Station”. Notice the swappable face-plates for the iQuest – very smart accessorizing and use of updated content. There’s something about customized skins and faceplates that drives people crazy.
Another the LeapPad, also from Leapfrog. This one has a stylus that allows kids to play tracks corresponding to parts of an interactive book placed on the pad. Each time a kid turns a page, they must press “Go” with the stylus. Each page has the “Go” button at a different place on the left side of the page, so the LeapPad is able to discriminate between pages.
“Club Birthday” and “Masquerade Madness” from Mattel. These are two of the many many Barbie-like accessorized dolls for girls. Almost the entire girls section in Toys R Us consists of dolls just like this – with clothes, jewelry, and some kind of context about where the doll might be going dressed like this. Some include DVDs – I wonder what’s on them.
HitClips from Tiger. These are small music players marketed for girls. Tiny cartridges hold individual songs, and are inserted into the player. Players have a headphone jack and small ear-buds. Some cartridges and players can contain trivia information that is displayed on the small LCD panel. I liked the one that is basically just a clip-on headphone.
Factor Frenzy from Learning Resources. This is a talking multiplication game. I’m not sure exactly how the game-play goes, but it seems to be about pressuring you to think fast trains you to learn your times-tables. The table-like nature of the game looks good, and it’s easy to imagine some frantic cooperative multiplication going on with this thing.
Walking into FAO Schwartz was a huge difference from the cluttered cheap feeling in ToysRUs. The entrance is covered with very high quality stuffed animals. Something about these -both the high quality look and feel – makes them inherently attractive compared to most interactive toys.
The Friends With You plush dolls were the most remarkable toys at FAO Schwartz. Each one had distinct character and interesting design. This one, Barbie, has a Ku-Klux-Klan hood (or Abu Ghraib) over its head. The materials are high quality and they are a nice and substantial size.
This is Mr. TTT, another plush from Friends With You. Mr. TTT is composed of three seperate pillow-shapes connected with a thick tether. You can disconnect them and give one to a friend (or so the story goes). The modularity of these was very interesting. Once again, they felt substantial in size and materials. Really a high-quality doll.
Poppings, another from Friends With You. Their designs are all excellent.
FAO Schwartz had some really nice Japanese-style collectible toys. I’m not sure what these are called. Some had pseudo-tribal markings all over them. Others had bar-codes. I really liked the totally blank ones that enable you to paint your own.
Slightly freaky, FAO Schwartz has a huge display where you can select the features of a custom doll. They make them on the spot.
Now for the Discovery Channel Store toys. This is a Remote Control Spy Listener from Discovery. The car has a microphone that feeds via radio-link to a headset. Kids can spy on their parents. Telepresence for toddlers. Simple but effective.
Another Spy Listener from Discovery, this time in a spring-loaded hand-held gun-style device. I’m not sure what the sunglasses are for, but you’ve got to be discreet when spying on Mom and Dad.
Taking the ant farm to the next level is Discovery’s Biosphere Habitat. It has automated temperature control and a spray watering system that allows you to grow plant and insect life. There is a magnified viewing hole and various other accessories. The shape and design is nice.
THe Motion Music Maker from Discovery allows kids to compose music by waving their hands over four infra-red sensors. I didn’t see this product in the store, but it was listed on the website. I don’t know what parameters of the music you can control.
These are Music Blocks from Neurosmith. I did not see Neurosmith toys in any stores (probablybecause Neurosmith went out of business), but I’m listing them here because of their great design. Cartridges contain music samples that can then be changed and re-arranged by turning or changing the positions of the blocks. This is a really inspirational toy because it’s basically a sampling station for kids.
This is Musini, another great toy from Neurosmith. Vibrations from kids jumping around sets off the tempo and rhythm of the music. I’ve seen a couple of rip-offs of this idea. I’m not sure what other parameters can be played with.
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Mar 27, 2005 
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