Clever electronic features are the make-or-break feature in many new toys on display at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, which entered the second day on Friday of a six-day run.
Baby Shark, a toy from Super Grand Enterprise of Hong Kong, exemplifies how makers are taking traditional playthings and giving them a new twist. This grey shark looks no different from millions of rubber ducks, frogs and fish that make babies’ bath-time fun.
But concealed inside is an electric motor that waggles the tail. Tomorrow’s baby will clutch a simple remote control with buttons for forwards, left and right to guide Baby Shark round the bathtub.
Remarkably, the toy seems perfectly waterproof and can even be recharged while dripping wet. It reaches shops this year.
Winchell Cheung, director of the German branch of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, explained this week in Nuremberg the strategy of Hong Kong toy makers: remake traditional toys as ”smart toys” to keep ahead of the competition.
The fair in Germany is the world’s biggest annual toy show, but the world centre of toy design and manufacturing today is far to the east in Hong Kong and southern China, although the brand names on many international toys are often American or European.
While many parents wonder why the simple toys of yesteryear are no longer good enough, sales figures tell a clear story.
Mattel, the leading United States company, unveiled a 2005 figure this week at its El Segundo, California, headquarters showing a slippage in sales for core brands: Barbie dolls down 13% and Hot Wheels model cars down 1%.
Overall, Mattel only managed to raise worldwide net sales by 1% to $5,2-billion.
Cheung and analysts agree that demand for toys is declining because of falling birth-rates and a tendency for children to ”mature” faster, shaking off toys and demanding video games and MP3 players at an ever earlier age.
That is why ”electronic” is considered a crucial selling point for games. In Nuremberg, even old-fashioned board-games displayed this year come with a DVD attached so that players can simultaneously watch video clips enhancing the fantasy world of the game.
Mehano, Slovenia’s leading general toy-maker, is counting on a range of toy computers for growth.
The latest, the ”Super Bee”, due out this June, comes with an ingenious rotating display.
Aimed at children aged three to five, it has three tiny keyboards arranged around the display module like spokes on a wheel. One is a very simple keyboard with coloured buttons for beginners, a second is an alphabetical keyboard and the advanced one is a musical keyboard.
The display on the product can be twisted round by hand to face whichever keyboard is in use.
”It’s got 18 activities built in,” said a salesperson for the Izola based company at the fair. ”For example, it teaches children step-by- step, what do I need to do for a flower to grow?”
Brio, a Swedish manufacturer of wooden trains, has arrived at the fair in Germany with a curious riposte to the all-conquering computer. Instead of offering a computerised model railway, Brio has devised a railway version of the world of computers.
The tracks of its ”Brio Network” product are painted white to symbolise the information superhighway, and the locomotives are in different colours to symbolise the different sorts of ”data package” on the line between the different stations-cum-computers.
The train set is meant to teach children how the internet works.
Hooked up behind the locomotives are wagons that carry e-mails and attachments.
This child’s internet even includes a nasty little doll named Viro who hides inside attachments and infects computers.
Specialised trains illustrate how data can be transferred to CD-ROM drives.
Brio says the idea is not just a concept, but will be released as a toy in August in Sweden, Germany and Britain. The tracks and rolling stock can be used in combination with Brio’s existing junior train sets. – Sapa-DPA