Tech Toys Dominate Toy Fair 2007

Edis Krad writes "An CNN Money article previews the Hot Toys for 2007 from this past week's Toy Fair. The article is a great place to start looking through the hundreds of new products that were on display at the annual industry event. Among those featured in the article, I was particularly impressed with the Video Journal (blogging for kids?), the virtual bicycle (apparently, riding a real bicycle isn't cool enough anymore), and last but not least, the robotic parrot, that oddly reminds me of the replicant owl in Blade Runner. For more details on tech toys at the event, IEEE Spectrum has a rundown on the nerdier toys available. Artificial snow and a pre-assembled Mentos/Coke kit were two of that journalist's favorites. For different perspectives Forbes has a look at the toy business as it stands since last week, and Wired's Luddite column crabs that kids have too many techie toys nowadays. Dagnabit."

Comments

Re:Depends on what a "tech toy" is . . .

[Eivind]

It's always possible to have too many.

If you're swimming in toys you're unlikely to, especially as a young child, even manage to know what you actually posess, much less play with it or learn from it.

For example, I have a 3 year old son. Despite the fact that we basically never buy toys for him anymore he gets so many as gifts for christmas, birthday, whatever from family and friends that he's got tons more than he knows what to do with. I am positive he posesses 500 distinct toys. And we could throw away 75% of them tomorrow without him even *NOTICING* that they're gone.

Fewer higher-quality toys is, imho, always going to be the superior choice. 90% of the time you see him playing with 5% of the toys anyway, and most often those with best quality and those from which he'll learn the most.

90% of the stuff sold in toy-stores is complete and utter JUNK. One can definitely have too much of it. Even the JUNK that is nominally tech-toys.

Re:To many tech toys?

[SkyDude]

What advantage do you get from playing with a playstation? It seems many people here assume that if it's got a computer in it, it's educational.

Strong thumbs?

Raising three kids has shown me that while I appreciate the tech-iness of some of the toys out there, when they were small, the kids are quite happy playing with the basics - blocks, dolls, small Matchbox-type cars and even green plastic Army men. It wasn't until the two oldest hit their teen years did tech stuff become interesting to them. My soon-to-be 10 year old daughter has surprised me by being an avid player of "Nintendogs", and I understand some of her friends are intense users too. So equal opportunity in gaming has arrived! But, she also has a collection of Barbies and a couple of American Girl dolls and she's quite content to be developing her imagination playing quietly with them.

Methinks tech toys work best for older kids, but the ones aimed at the younger crowd are a solution in search of a problem.