Media Macaroni

It’s a breezy February day in New York City, and once again I found myself at Toy Fair. Now, it used to be that I wore a trade guest badge representing the company that I worked for, but now that I’m a free agent, I got me a fancy schmancy media badge. Turns out that many more people want to talk to me. Where I used to be able to breeze briskly through in a good 90 minutes, today I was held toy captive for six hours. 

I plan on having Toy Fair posts throughout the week, but I thought I’d start with some of my favorites. 

I had talked here about Sprig Toys back in December. At that time, I was digging the idea of them but hadn’t had a chance to handle the toys. The products are very cool in person, and they’ve introduce a couple new lines. Some of the new toys, like their Eco-trucks really, really want your kids playing outside. In their new Sprig Hollow sets, they’ve even included “seed-infused recycled paper flowers” that you can actually plant to grow wildflowers. I was really taken with the Story Blocks sets seen here. You can pop characters and landscapes out of board books to set up scenes for storytelling. 

If you’ve been to Toy Fair, you know the sheer volume of plush product to be seen. And there, in an unassuming booth on the lower level, I found my favorite plush – Bunkbots. These huggable robots would be a huge hit in our house – we’ve already talked about a robot theme for the 4th birthday that’s not until summer.

My friends at Leveractive were showcasing their latest Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby CD-ROM, My Musical World. Olive enjoyed these CD-ROMs when she was just cutting her little teeth on the computer, and with this latest title they’ve created a musical experience that will resonate with kids from 6 to 36 months. There’s still the bang-on-the-keyboard good times, but there’s also great experimentation with musical instruments and different musical styles. I like Flopsy the Dog on the wheels of steel. All babies should learn scratching and mixing as early as possible.

It’s about this point in the show when people head to the Screen Life booth. Your blood sugar is low, and they have free popcorn. Between the buttered handfuls I was cramming into my mouth, I found their new DVDiscoveries Animal Planet: Baby Animals Edition. I know you’re saying, a DVD game? Really? Aren’t we done with those? I thought so, too, but hear me out. The limitations of DVD as a gaming platform, namely the hair-pulling response times, aren’t big limitations for the younger players. It actually sets the activities at a pace that works well for them.  And this particular game has adorable footage and interesting information about baby animals.

I wandered into the New Sound Kids booth to check out some tunes and… oh, Dan Zanes, children’s music superstar… I didn’t see you there.

Tell me honestly, does Dan Zanes make my hair look flat? 

And finally I thought I’d go check out the Techno Source electronic Rubik’s Cube everyone’s been talking about (for more detail, check out this post on 360Blog), and happened upon something I found way more interesting. Make custom plush toys with Printies! Using online software, you design your own plush. You can choose from a variety of animal shapes, colors, features – all the usual customization mumbo jumbo. But, when you’re all done, you spit the customized figure out of your inkjet printer onto custom printer-friendly fabric. Both sides. Then you tear off the surrounding paper, stuff it, and add some feet. Did I mention that there’s no sewing involved? It sounds like you’ll be able to upload images when it’s online, so your child can put her own face on it. 

The end result isn’t the best toy in your house, but the creative process of making it is very cool. I could definitely see this being used for birthday parties or as custom party favors. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 4:56 am and is filed under Kids Creating Content, Music, Toys, Web Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.