American International Toy Fair

February 11-14, 2007

IMC recently attended the American International Toy Fair and made the following observations:

• Turbo Calnago rolled out a new line-up of Ferrari Bicycles.

• For Dummies was sprinkled throughout the Javits Center across many different toy products.

• Radio Flyer won 2007 Outdoor Toy of the Year award for its Fold-2-Go Tricycle.

New Products on Show

• Fisher-Price developed a new line-up of products called Fisher-Price Electronics for Kids—real electronics designed just for kids.  In the line-up is the new Kid-Tough™ Digital Camera.  The camera is for 3 years and up and allows kids to get creative by taking, viewing and even printing their own digital pictures. 

• A newcomer to the toy industry is an over 30 year old consumer electronics company--Sakar International—with its extensive line-up of electronic toys for kids and tweens.  Sakar just announced its newly formed licensing division to manage all their inbound licensing initiatives.  Sakar signed Shrek, Major League Baseball, Spiderman, Dummies, and a few others for their introduction of product targeted to the kids’ market.

Licensing Trends and Thoughts

• There is an explosion of electronics into the toy industry.   The toy industry’s concern of “age compression,” has forced toy companies to become more innovative to compete with electronics and video games. Some toy companies introduced electronics such as MP3 players, digital cameras, cell phones along with accessories for kids and tweens.