Global Toy News

The mother of invention

 

 

 

 

 David Smith launched ToyTalk.co.uk, an online magazine covering the world of toys in the UK, in 2006. He is also the writer of the book 100 Classic Toys.

 

I’ve always loved inventors. The white coat-wearing, wild-haired, arm-waving types are the best (think of Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future) but any inventor is worthy of reverence in my book.

The toy world has had its share of great inventors. Maybe none of them has come up with something as radical or important as the internal combustion engine (or, for that matter, a time-travelling DeLorean), but the likes of Erno Rubik, Frank Hornby and Ruth Handler have enhanced countless lives with their creations.

I find it a little dispiriting, therefore, that so much of the modern toy industry is so heavily reliant on recycling existing products, simply putting a new licensing spin on toys that have been with us for years.

There’s still new stuff out there, but the recent launch of Battleship games with a Battleship (the movie) twist (a licensed product based on a film that is, in turn, based on the original game) is surely an ultimately futile exercise in chasing your own tail.

In more than six years covering the toy industry in the UK, I’ve been lucky enough to meet some genuinely inspiring people – inventors who have dreamed up something new. Some of them have been snapped up by established companies, while others have done it the hard way, financing their own dreams and bringing products to market with little or no help from anybody else.

I look back on meeting the creative talents behind Jurassic Wars (a brilliant dinosaur-based card game) Daughters of History (high-end, historically themed dolls) and others as some of the highlights of my time writing about toys.

At January’s Toy Fair in London, I met another pioneer, quite by accident. On my way to an appointment with one of the biggest toy companies operating in the UK, I was stopped by a young woman carrying a plastic bag. Luckily, I had a few minutes to spare and was happy enough to listen to what she had to say.

Abigail Obar quickly outlined her plans to launch a new board game. She had arrived at Toy Fair with a prototype in the bag she was carrying and was pitching the idea to anyone who would listen.

I thought the game, called Medal Haul, had enough relevance in this Olympics year to maybe attract one or two of the established manufacturers to take a closer look. Exchanging business cards, I promised to keep in touch.

Hasbro the Movie Company overrules Hasbro the Toy Company

Hasbro announced last night that they were delaying the release of the "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" movie by nine months to March of 2013.  The reason given is that they wish to change the movie to a 3D format. 

As you would imagine this was no small decision on Hasbro’s part.  According to Gerrick Johnson of BMO Capital in a statement released today:  “[T]he “street date” for the GI Joe 2 toys to hit stores shelves was this weekend. Retailers had already brought the product into their back rooms and warehouses…Walmart actually jumped the gun and many stores already had GI Joe 2 product on shelf as of yesterday.”

The Wall Street Journal in its article “Hasbro Delays Release of ‘GI Joe” Sequel by Nine Months” cited the reasoning behind the delay as follows: 

Time Distortion and Play; 10 components of an immersive experience

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece entitled, “Slow Time, Fast Time and Children.”  In that article I wrote about how the experience of time can be relative to what an individual is doing.  If they are doing something immersive like playing a game time moves fast.  If they are doing something tedious like waiting for baggage at the airport, times seems to stand still.  As I wrote at the time: “That means that great toys and games have to give such an immersive experience that players will not sense time passing.”

Thanks to one of our readers, Richard Cocca, I have now learned a bit more about why we lose track of time when we are doing something we enjoy.  Richard sent me an article entitled “Which people are most likely to experience ‘flow’?”  The article defines “flow” as “… the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”  The concept was developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist who now teaches and lives in the United States.

It appears that individuals have varying abilities to experience flow.  It also seems however, that products can be designed to help bring the user to flow.  According to Wikipedia, there are 10 components in experiencing “flow” but not all 10 are required. They are:

Hong Kong Toy Fair Jumpstarts Kidult Section

Elizabeth Wilson has been a marketing consultant in the game and toy industry for over 8 years.

  

kidult (plural kidults)

1. (informal) (marketing, sociology) An adult who participates in youth culture and activities traditionally intended for children.                                                                Wiktionary

Hong Kong Toy Fair is the first to launch an all new “Kidult” section for their 2013 Hong Kong Toy & Games Fair.  If you were at their 2012 extravaganza, which I just so happen to have been, you’d understand why.  They had plenty of fun toys for young kids, but a whole lot more electronic, highly geeky and technical ‘toys’ that were geared towards adults. Unless that is, you let your kids play with airsoft guns, high powered magnets and $250 model cars. 

One of the greatest examples in the toy industry today of this is the award winning TOSY robots, showcased at CES and Toy Fair 2012. It may be repped by Justin Bieber, but these standalone $200+ robots are not something you want your kids tinkering with.

And it’s not like these adult geek, hobby and electronic toys haven’t been at Toy Fairs before. It’s just that they haven’t been given their own section to shine…until now.  Most fair floors are organized by biggest brand vendors and toy type (wooden, electronic etc), not by age.

Wal-Mart Board of Directors Gets Pressed from Top and Bottom; employees start a petition

Wal-Mart’s Board of Directors and its leadership team are feeling the heat due to the recent revelations about alleged payoffs in Mexico (see “Wal-Mart…What if?" and “Wal-Mart’s Bribery Scandal; why it matters”).  According to a USA Today toy article, “Calif. pension fund to vote against Wal-Mart board”, “[t]he California State Teachers' Retirement System says it has lost faith in the board's independence amid allegations of bribery in Wal-Mart's Mexican operation. Wal-Mart's slate of nominees comprises 15 incumbents including CEO Mike Duke…”

The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the country’s second largest pension fund; so their decision matters.  In fact, Forbes reports that CalSTRS “… is also suing current and former executives and directors of Wal-Mart over the bribery allegations, echoing recent calls to vote against re-election for CEO Mike Duke, former CEO Lee Scott and Chairman Rob Walton…by the likes of New York City Pension Funds (which own 5.6 million shares).”

It’s one thing if pressure is just coming from the outside but it also seems to be popping up at the store employee level.  I was sent a petition flyer that was created by a Wal-Mart employee and was  being

The Toy Industry; Where Are the People of Color?

Why are there so few Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans in the toy industry?  Whenever I attend toy industry functions in the US, I am always struck by how few people of color I see.  It makes me wonder if, when we gather,  the lack of diversity makes us somewhat color blind to the changes taking place in America’s children. 

That thought struck me again and hard when I reviewed the latest census figures.  Here is how the Los Angeles Times reports it in an article by Michael Muskal, “Census Bureau: Minority births outnumbered whites for first time:” The United States has reached a historic tipping point -- with Latino, Asian, mixed race and African American births constituting a majority of births for the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau  reported Thursday.”  The article goes on to state:

The racial and ethnic shift was an expected, but still important, turning point for the nation, who’s economic and political elites remain essentially white and primarily male. The new numbers indicate that the upcoming generations will be more diverse and could have an increasingly broader view of issues ... There will also be cultural changes -- as there have been in recent years, with foods, music and ideas from Latino cultures, for example, spreading into the mainstream.

If you look at specific states, 60.3% of births in California and 55.2% of those in Texas were to

Unsourcing; Is It the Beginning of the End for Outsourcing?

What comes after outsourcing, unsourcing?  That according to a great article in The Economist entitled: “Outsourcing is so last year.”   After years of outsourcing call centers to India and now The Philippines, companies are beginning to do away with call centers all together.  Here is how the The Economist puts it:

"Unsourcing", as the new trend has been dubbed, involves companies setting up online communities to enable peer-to-peer support among users. Instead of speaking with a faceless person thousands of miles away, customers' problems are answered by individuals in the same country who have bought and used the same products.

Call centers will not completely go away.  After all, one’s peers cannot help with a billing or shipping i

PlayCon; The Irony and the Ecstasy

I am back from PlayCon 2012 and the Washington DC Fly In.  PlayCon and the Fly In are unique toy industry events as they provide a chance to mingle, in a relaxed environment, with the toy industry’s leading movers and shakers.  It’s a chance to make new friendships, strengthen old ones and learn, learn, learn.

The Ecstasy

This year’s PlayCon and Fly In was, I believe, exceptional in its content and its sheer fun.  Maybe you had to be there, but the event kicked off with a surprise bagpipe band that included the American industry’s leading Scotsmen, Bob Wann (CEO Patch Products) and John Barbour (CEO LeapFrog).  Believe me, that alone,  was worth the trip. 

Fun was a major component of this year’s event (we are, after all,  in the play business) and included an evening with the Capital Steps, a satiric musical review and good natured banter from the podium.  Content, however, was king as everyone I spoke with said they never made so many notes as they did this year. 

We heard from the international and domestic retailing communities as Richard Barry, Toys R Us, U.S.; John Witham and John Alteio, Amazon; Victor Loustalot,  Grupo Juguetero, Mexico; Hector Nunez, Ri Happy Brinquedos, Brazil provided us with insights on their company’s plans, challenges and successes.

We also received extremely valuable informationfrom:

The Gravitational Pull of Giant Games

Have you seen one?  Are you drawn to them?  Giant Games seem to be popping up more and more often at game fairs across the country and sometimes (if my guests are lucky) in my living room.  At ChiTAG alone, we’ve seen a giant Wobble (Identity Games), Word on the Street (Out of the Box), Q-Bitz (Mindware) and Jenga (Hasbro). Last year at GenCon I saw a giant Pass the Pigs (Winning Moves) and Toy Fair I saw a giant Solitaire Chess (Think Fun).   I also hear that there is a giant Stomple (Spin Master) and SWISH (ThinkFun) making their way around the country and ThinkFun has new "giants" in the works.  Whew!

What’s Next in Toys; “Drawing on Glass?”

There’s an interesting piece in the New York Times by David Pogue entitled “The Joy of Drawing on Glass.”  It talks about an emerging class of low cost devices that allow you to draw on an electronic tablet screen with a goal “…to create the electronic equivalent of pen, pencil or brush on paper, so that artists, animators and architects can sketch or paint digitally.”

Until now, these devices have run in price from $1000 to $2500.  Now, it appears that “…change is coming. Cheap pen displays from no-name Chinese companies like Yiynova, P-Active and Bosto have begun appearing for sale on, for example, Amazon — and they cost as little as $300.”

Here is how Pogue describes the Yiynova from Panda City which sells for $300: