There was a certain fin de siècle feeling at the Javits Center during the week of Feb. 11 — it was the 99th annual Toy Fair, after all — as the toy biz hit New York City in suitably world-weary grandeur. Press releases moped that the learning segment of the toy industry was down 6% last year to $464 million, while the sports segment plummeted 29%, to $1.5 billion. (Action figure sales, wouldn’t you know, shot up 36%.) Perhaps in duck-and-cover mode, many distributors followed the old DK by barring their booths to any but retailers. Among the newly exclusive was International Playthings, the high-end toy distributor that sadly exited the book business a few years ago, and Learning Curve, which recently entered it via Friedman/Fairfax’s licensed Lamaze baby books.
The Jim Henson Company, in the midst of its own trials (it may be put on the block again, given parent EM.TV’s financial woes), was plugging major deals for The Hoobs, its joint production with the UK’s Channel 4. The Hoobs, of course, come from Hoobland, “a sunny, colorful, bouncy world,” and travel the universe in their Hoobmobile, reporting their findings back home to an enormous reference database called the Hoobopaedia. The program will air on TV in Ontario shortly, with Canada’s Spin Master Toys snapping up the toy license for that territory. A massive line of Hoob products has proliferated with the show, spanning books (Egmont in Europe), scooters, bedding, stationery, puzzles, toiletry products, and even yogurt. A shameless success overseas (250 episodes were commissioned up front a couple of years ago, and the series recently took home the BAFTA “Best Preschool Live Action Series” award), the enterprise has now signed 14 television licenses and has put toy and publishing efforts in place worldwide — everywhere except the US, that is. Now’s your chance to hoobledoop, as they say.
Empire-building is also on track for the Eloise line of toy and book paraphernalia launched by itsy bitsy following Kay Thompson’s passing (she had opposed expansion of the license). Simon & Schuster has plunged right in with the sequel Eloise Takes a Bawth, which was shelved after four years of development when Thompson forced the withdrawal of the three earlier sequels. In other matters, Klutz appears to have finagled a knockoff of the popular Workman Brain Quest series, under the title Klutz Kwiz and including a computer-like “gizmo” offering multiple-choice answers. The device snaps together with decks of grade-specific questions. Word has it the new ones aren’t selling, which may explain why no one’s filed a trade dress lawsuit.
And while most publishers pushed the playtime aspect of their program, Amy Epstein’s new publishing company The Straight Edge promised to help your child “win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2036.” The books are retellings of classic children’s stories (Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs) complete with cutouts of the characters and props allowing the child to retell or “creatively change the story.” Let’s just hope the young creators never have to tangle with the Margaret Mitchell estate.
