I Spy

Wild Planet’s cool line of surveilence toys makes Forbes.com.

Toy Fair 2006

Holy Lego Brick Batman! Toy Fair was a blast. Many superheroes besides the Caped Crusader were present including The Thing and The Invincible Iron Man. Highlights included a great opening speech by Malcolm Gladwell on his latest book, Blink, the relaunch of the original Dam Trolls by Play Along. Their booth was wild, as was the hair of some of their employees.

Hit the slopes

I write about my fondness for sleding at length in the Flexible Flyer chapter of Timeless Toys, so when I came across this great article on www.slate.com, I knew I’d have to share it. Check out Ulrich Boser’s extensive comparison of the latest and greatest sleds.

Wired

I confess to be a Wired newbie. I’ve picked up the last two issues looking for a mention of Timeless Toys that I’d hoped would run after assistant editor Brian Lam called me for my opinion on the burning question, “Will videogames bring an end to traditional toys?” My long winded aswer was:

In 1982, Atari sold 7 million Pac-Man cartridges. At the time it was an unequaled success. People forget that a year later, Atari shipped over a million unwanted video game cartridges to a landfill in New Mexico. Then in 1984, Selchow & Righter sold 20 million copies of Trivial Pursuit, a traditional board game that was downright Victorian in its simple call to gather around the table. I think as long a people want to interact and play face to face with one another, traditional games and toys will always co-exist with video games. In addition, we’re seeing a blurring of the lines dividing traditional toys and video games. Look at the success of the DVD games like Mattel’s Scene It? Is it a board game or is it a video game? I think it’s both.

I don’t think that video games really compete against traditional games and toys like they used to. Video games are sold in a different part of the store (the movie section) and don’t take “shelf space” away from traditional toys. With video game sales “out-grossing” the box office in recent years, I think the more relevant question is, “Are video games killing movies?”

What Wired ended up printing, along with responses to the same question from play pundits Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America and Jason Della Rocca, executive director, International Game Developers Association, can be read at Wired Magazine.

A few other reasons to check out this issue include a great cover story on Lego including “How obsessed fans are helping Lego reinvent the world’s coolest toy,” a futuristic look at Batman through the eyes of novelist Paul Pope and even a cool picture of the 2XL Robot, which we discussed here awhile back.