New York Toy Fair was this past week at the Jacob Javits Center in (you guessed it!) New York City. Host to the worlds largest gathering of toys and games, organized by the Toy Industry Association, hundreds of toy manufacturers and game publishers gather to show off their recent and upcoming products to retailers, buyers, and the press. The New York Toy Fair is filled with nearly every toy, game, form of electronic entertainment, and outdoor play thing you can imagine. With roughly 100,000 products and 7,000 new toy debuts (not to mention 30,000 “play professionals” from more then 100 countries) NY Toy Fair is a wonderland for your inner child.
With all these toys, we wondered what was new for this year. Some things, like the very popular monsters, zombies, mustaches, and duct tape crafts are still holding strong, with plenty of new dolls, kits, toys, and you name it coming out this year in every shape and size. You name, it, it can be found with a mustache.
Expanding this year are apps and virtual worlds of every kind. Every toy, every game, every-everything has a virtual aspect to it. Have a teddy bear? Here’s an app to go with it. New robot? App. Learning Portuguese? There’s an app to go with that. There are even toothbrushes with apps- I’m not kidding you. I’m waiting on an app for apps. An app organizer, perhaps? Because I’m app-ed out, app-arently.
Also trending this year are interactive talking toys (dolls or bears or robots that talk back to you, do as you request, and sometimes sing and tell stories), unicorns (nearly every major manufacturer has at least one, as a doll’s “pet” or as it’s own stand alone product), and anything retro. Some toys, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, are back with a new look- some, like the Fisher Price dial up rotary phone, looks the way it did the first time it came out decades ago- right up to it’s packaging.
Got a crafty kid? There is every kind of weaving kit you can imagine, and from every brand big or small. Weaving rugs, potholders, bracelets, scarves- really anything and everything. This is building on the success of the Rainbow Loom, one of the TOTY’s toy of the year award winners for 2014. If you have not heard of this toy yet- where have you been? There are plenty to choose from- take the kids and choose your poison. Want to take it up a notch? The variety of jewelry making kits is as wide as the Sochi Olympics building difficulties. From things that you could actually get your mother to enjoy wearing to the standard sting of colored wood and glitter, you can find something to suit your little designer. Bead/peg kits are also going to be all the rage this year, with not only jewelry kits but craft kits, stained glass makers, 3D pictures, and more- all made with beads, pegs, or “dots”.
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