Toy
Fair 2005:
Bringing Yoga and Credit Card Debt to the Under 3 set
FROM PUBLISHING TRENDS (MARCH
2005)
Just as it seemed the somnolent retail
toy market was perking up, with strong late-December
sales and words like "optimistic" floating
through the press, this year's lackluster Toy
Fair served as a reminder that it's going to
take more than a nuzzling T-Rex to bring the industry
out of its slump.
The largest to date, boasting 1600
exhibitors from 31 countries, attendee registration
for "Play Meets Profit" was reportedly up
18%, and although the miles of snaking line dividers
seemed to suggest that organizers had planned for a
descent of the hordes, the absence of people waiting
in lines called into question where exactly that 18
percent was hiding.
The newest addition to the fair was
the Reading, Writing and Rhythm section that grouped
all of the publishers - from industry giants Scholastic
and HarperCollins to unknown independents
Knowing and Growing and ee
publishing - in one aisle. The section also
attempted to cash in on the booming children's audio
market, an endeavor that might have been successful
had the aisle of choice not been aisle 3000, located
in what turned out to be the Jersey of the Javits, (which,
in a year filled with talk about experimental marketing,
and the importance of product placement in innovative
venues, was ironically ineffective).
Apart from Scholastic
and Klutz, which were buzzing near
the entrance, Time Warner, Disney,
HarperCollins, Silver Dolphin
(the AMS imprint), Wiley,
Evan Moor, Random House,
Harcourt and Candlewick
were all empty. In some cases, not even the exhibitor
was present, and the stands were left to fend for themselves.
Although Usborne's distributor EDC
(also empty) said they didn't notice a large difference
in crowd size after being subsumed by RW&R, other
publishers were more pessimistic, noting that not only
was attendance sluggish, but that buyers who did manage
to wend their way to the far end of the fair were doing
much less on-the-spot buying than in years past.
Not withstanding the above, Reyne
Rice, Toy Trends Specialist for the Toy
Industry Association, said that they had received
a "very good response" to the Reading, Writing
and Rhythm section, and that it "will be back next
year." But to the casual observer, publishers who
opted out of the RW&R conglomeration - like publishing
newcomer University Games (with their
enormous right-at-the-front-door spread), Lisa
LeLeu Puppet Show Books, and Soft Play
- seemed much more pleased than those who didn't. One
vendor near the back wall managed to put a positive
spin on things, however, as he sat eating chocolates
in his empty booth. "It could be worse," he
said. "I'm just happy I'm not across from the guy
with the washboard ties."
KAGOY
is the Word
"Kids
are getting older younger" or KAGOY (as the sassy
industry acronym goes) was the catch phrase of the moment,
after high tech toys for tots offered a sunny respite
from an otherwise gloomy overall retail decline. According
to The NPD Group electronic learning
and youth electronics toy sales in the infant/preschool
and learning/exploration categories were up 10% to 19%
respectively, putting a spotlight on the diaper demographic.
"Pre-School
is hot," said Chris Campbell,
SVP Marketing at Publications International,
emphasizing what has long been known to be a pillar
of licensing activity. "Kids are constantly exposed
to progressively more sophisticated, interactive opportunities,"
he said, "and if you look at product going forward,
the majority will have some level of interactivity with
an electronic component."
With 90% plus
market share in the sound books business, PIL has a
slew of interactive books for young kids. Their hallmark
product, the Story Reader, is a portable
electronic case that holds refillable books, and automatically
recognizes the page that the child is on, reading out
loud accordingly. After selling 1.5 million units since
it debuted in 2003, PIL has plans to crack the even
younger market by introducing a My First Story
Reader aimed at children six months to age
three (and featuring Sesame Street,
Winnie the Pooh and Baby Einstein)
this fall.
One of the
most exciting PIL sound books, however, was the Sponge
Bob cash register book that will come fully
equipped with a scanner that scans barcodes inside the
book and then posts the total on the attached cash register's
LCD screen. The register acts as a calculator as well,
with a functional money-filled drawer that pops in and
out. For those shopping-savvy toddlers who know that
plastic is the way to go, the book also comes with a
credit card that keeps track of purchases, allowing
the child to learn the joy of addition and subtraction
by racking up debt.
KAGOY doesn't
just mean trickle down high-tech, however, and already
a "pendulum swing toward low-tech products"
can be seen as well, Rice pointed out. Anticipating
the stress that such a frenetic techno-gadget world
can induce, parents are jumping the gun and buying low-tech
to counteract the onslaught, snatching up yoga videos
from Kids Musical Yoga and relaxation
CDs from Joy Stories for their newborns
to three-year-olds.
Now, if only
Starbucks would come on board with
chai flavored breast milk…
Can
You Say Buen Negocio?
As an aside,
Spanish was everywhere at this year's fair, from product
lines (1/3 of PIL's line now has Spanish language equivalents)
to the chatter in the aisles. In one of the newest successful
developments in the growing English/Spanish asociación,
Baby Einstein was licensed by Disney to AMS' Silver
Dolphin for distribution in Mexico. According to Jeanne
Mosure, Disney's VP Global Retail Markets and
Sydney Stanley, AMS’ VP Product
Development, the joint venture, Silver Dolphin
En Espanol, launched with 12 titles in 2003,
followed by 8 more in 2004, and was hugely successful
(fueled, no doubt, by Costco's growing
presence south of the border). This early success prompted
AMS/Disney to test distribution for the same Spanish
language titles in the US via PGW.
Plans for this year include expanded distribution to
Chile and Argentina.
©2005
Publishing Trends
