ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
February 20, 2001
Inside Toy Fair 2001
Our TFK reporters play it up at the biggest toy convention in the world
 Joel checks out the latest Action Man figure. |
TFK reporters Joel Schwartzberg and Dina Maasarani went to the biggest toy convention in the world and filed this report for timeforkids.com:
 |  Joel controls his own Battlebot in a battle of robots. |
New York City recently hosted the largest collection of top-selling and top-secret toys in the world, but no one under 18 was allowed to even come close! Sound crazy? Well, crazy is one of the words you might use to describe this year's American International Toy Fair, the largest gathering of toy makers in the world (though no one has officially counted those elves way up North).
Held every year in New York City, the 98-year-old convention features products from nearly 2,000 toy companies representing 106 countries. They showed off their stuff to 40,000 visitors, including toy industry experts, toy companies, reporters, and not one single kid. Toy store owners from around the world came to order the toys they think you'll most want.
Since you weren't allowed in, we went for you to check out the coolest and craziest toys out there, many of which are so top-secret that we weren't even allowed to take pictures!
|  Sit! Stay! Recharge! Dina gets attached to some robot dogs. |
Robots Get Real
The big news in toys this year: robots! We saw robot dogs, robot cats, robot mice, robot insects, robot dinosaurs, and even robot babies! Many of them eat, sleep, communicate, and get sick or lazy if you don't take care of them.
Toy makers at Tiger Electronics say their $200 i-Cybie robotic dog is so smart, it plugs itself into its own charging station every time its batteries are low. How's that for artificial intelligence! Many people in the toy business say Sony's Aibo is the pet that started the robot craze. Today's Aibo has four senses, which match the senses of humans and animals and can take pictures with a camera built in its nose.
|  Dina rocks her own Robo Baby. |
Tiger's $30 Robo Baby crawls and coos when it's happy, cries when it's not, eats when it's hungry and sleeps when it's tired. With proper care, Robo Baby even matures from cooing to saying the words: "Mommy, hungry." Robo Baby will be "delivered" to stores this fall.
B.I.O. Bugs, Wow Wee's own robo-insects, come in different styles and personalities and use radio signals to sense other B.I.O Bugs in the room. Moving up the food chain is the $100 Interactive Raptor, a 3-foot long dinosaur pet that can walk, chomp its jaws and change its eye color. Both will be available by fall.
|  Dina gets a demonstration of the things W.A.V.E. Link can do in the palm of your hand. |
High Tech Kids
Grown-ups have had their own palm-sized digital organizers for years. Now it's kids' turn. We saw many Palm Pilot-like devices that will not only store information, but also allow kids to pass messages - including digital pictures - to their friends. The $100 W.A.V.E. Link, by Kessel Electronics, transmits audio, video and e-mail to other W.A.V.E Link units up to 1,000 feet away, while the $30 e.chat lets you zap instant messages back and forth up to 100 feet away with the tap of your special stylus pen.
|  Imagine how many shoezies you could fit in your closet! |
Shoe Business
Finger fashion is now in style, and we're not talking about rings. Hasbro has created a new line of plastic collectible pumps, sandals, slippers or sneakers small enough to fit on the tips of your fingers. Called Shoezies, each one comes in its own little shoebox that can be stored in a special shoe closet. Each pair sells for $5 and will be available this April.
|  Dina checks out the latest HitClips, hidden in a pen and a watch. |
Big Music Gets Smaller
You may have heard of Tiger Electronics' HitClips, the computer chips that play a minute of new and to-be-released pop songs. With more and more pop acts like Britney, Christina, and 'N SYNC getting into the small sound act, Tiger Electronics has developed new ways to hear them. The HitClips Groove Machine lets you sing your favorite songs with a mini microphone. The HitClips Telephone is a real phone that lets you play music when you put your friends on hold. The HitClips Pen not only writes, but comes with a hidden earpiece.
|  Joel controls the joystick to a Huffy scooter. |
Super Scooters
We learned from some of the top scooter makers and designers that newer scooters will focus less on how quickly they fold up and more on how you ride them. Several Huffy scooters featured rugged, off-road wheels, foot platforms that look more like skateboards, and a long joystick-looking ball instead of handlebars. The joystick and skateboard features make it easier to do more tricks and stunts. Another cool scooter called the California Chariot was described as a cross between two skateboards and a BMX bike. We didn't test its top speed of 18 miles per hour because we were worried about running over some nearby robo babies.
Movie Mania
Speaking of running over things, you can't make it to your favorite movie these days without tripping over toys made to go along with it. Some of the biggest movies coming out will also have some of the biggest lines of toys to help sell them to kids. We saw toys connected to movies like "The Lord of the Rings," "Jurassic Park 3," "Monsters, Inc." (from the makers of Toy Story), and of course, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
|  Pondering Potter? The Harry Potter Book of Spells has all the answers. |
Inspired by Harry Potter's very first movie, Tiger Electronics has made the Harry Potter Book of Spells. This $25 book is really a personalized electronic encyclopedia that lets you look up all kinds of Potter trivia. The Book of Spells also teaches kids the rules of Quidditch, includes a quiz game and has an organizer so you can store information of your own.
|  Joel makes his own airbrushed art by blowing into a BLOpen. |
By the end of the day, we were very tired. Even on scooters we couldn't see all of the toys offered at the toy fair. And there's so much we haven't even told you. (Have you ever seen a pen that you blow ink out of?) But you can be sure of one thing: all of these toys will soon be hopping, e-mailing, scooting, flying, climbing, and slithering to you through your local toy stores. Don't say we didn't warn you!
