If you’ve been holding out for Aibo’s return, this isn’t the year for you.
This year’s Toy Fair, which begins Sunday at the Javits Center in New York City, is all about getting the best bang for your buck, and expensive, high-tech electronic toys won’t be the focus. This is is one business that can react quickly to economic circumstances.
Sure, there’s going to be a lot of standard-issue merch: the likes of Elmo, Dora, Barbie and Tinkerbell will rule the show floor, no doubt about it. But we’re here for the cool stuff, whether it’s ingenious and imaginative or simply a reinvention of something old. Here’s a few of the items on our itinerary:
• The Bernie Madoff action figure.
• A sidewalk airbrushing kit with wash-away ink, from Crayola.
• Mindflex, a “mind-control” game from Mattel that tracks electrical activity in your head muscles.
• Leapfrog’s new science-ed handheld gaming system.
Now, what do you want us to check out?
Photo: Pro-Zak
Never been at the NY Toy Show. How is it compared to the huge Nuremberg TOY FAIR closed last week?
Are kids allowed to get in or the got the same over 17 polidy like in Germany?
Your thoughts after stopping by the Looney Labs booth would be interesting.
http://wunderland.com/
Robots. I demand robots. Have fun, this sounds like an awesome fair.
Can you get more details about the airbrushing kit? There’s a project at the Robotics Club here that’s supposed to be making a robot to print out chalk designs, but it hasn’t made a lot of progress. They’ve been doing vector drawings with chunks of chalk, but I think a powdered chalk printer or this new thing you mentioned would be more successful.
How many companies do you think will be there advertising their lead and pthalate testing?
anything new and awesome in the World of LEGO? Also, I’m with “Pork Musket” on the Robots issue.
Pork’s comment reminded me that earlier, I was working on a Roomba (replacing the main board) while listening to music on an iPod. I realized that I was living in The Future. Servicing a personal robot while listening to a portable music library. It helps that my workbench is stainless steel.
It’s a lot more mundane than we thought it would be, but it’s still awesome.
mezco. any mezco at all. ‘specially the sackboys…
hmmm. that sounds worse than it really is…
toy fair not avn awards right?
I went to the NY Toy Fair many years ago. Steve Jackson (of Steve Jackson Games) couldn’t go and sent me his badge; all sorts of cottage-industry game manufacturers were erroneously impressed that I showed up at their booths.
What kind of neat boardgames are on display.
You guys already covered these, but the Jumping Brain figures are apparently going to be at booth 4960, level 1. (I’m on the newsletter, but haven’t managed to get one yet.)
I’d be interested to read about any toys you come across involving unusual uses of materials or making stuff: novel sculpting clays, new magnet toys, strange metals, remoldable plastics, optical effects, phosphorescence, weird elastic squishy or stretchy stuff, slimes, sands, strings, blocks, crafter/maker kits; that sort of thing.
Or, look for the Toy Ostensibly For Children That Is Most Likely to Be Re-Purposed By Easily Distracted Adults.