Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
The Kids Industry, an Adweek Special Report

A series of articles on marketing to children and families, from the marketers’ perspective.

Kids want what they want when they want it. The little centers-of-our-universe can beg and plead for their essentials — toys, snacks and TV shows — with unfettered determination. Turns out that parents, television networks and marketers are working double time to oblige.

In our first special issue on kids, we illustrate how companies are advancing their offerings to further get this young consumer demographic to pull harder on the family purse strings.

I imagine about half of you right now just threw up a little in your mouths. Get past that, though, and many of these articles make for a very interesting read.

Apr 26, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Momlogic Interviews Lee Unkrich

Lee Unkrich – director of the upcoming Pixar film “Toy Story 3” – was kind enough to partake in this interview with the site Momlogic.com, while at Toy Fair 2010 in New York City.

My favorite bit is when Lee was asked about the eleven-year gap in time since “Toy Story 2”:

The thing that surprised us that we weren’t quite expecting is that now that the hype is building for the movie. There’s a huge segment of the audience who were kids when “Toy Story,” and “Toy Story 2” came out — and for them there’s this enormous nostalgia. They’re excited to sort of touch base with their childhoods again. A lot of them are at that cusp of going into college or just leaving college and some of them are even having their first kids. So there again we’re tapping into that theme of change, that life’s journey. I think we’ve got everyone on this one. The characters have never gone away for the kids.

Feb 17, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

LEGO Sets the Board for Board Games

A look at the eight new board games from LEGO.

While LEGO Chess has been around for quite a while, I’m thrilled to see the company venture into this arena. I imagine many kids will soon be using the open platform of LEGO to extend and reinvent these board games – and how cool is that to think about?

Feb 09, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Must-Have Toys for the Holidays?

Scott Traylor compares a handful of the “Tops” and “Must Haves” lists of toys out there now for the holidays. All told, 44 different toys represented among the various lists – with robotic hamsters and Nerf guns among some of the toys making the grade multiple times.

There’s also some mad spreadsheet action that Scott has kindly provided, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Nov 09, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Inappropriate Toys for Children

From the Huffington Post, a list of the seven most “inappropriate” toys for kids. I don’t know about you, but I’ll be doggoned if that “kid’s toy tattoo parlor” isn’t the coolest thing ever.

Sep 14, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

The Battle of the (Gendered) Toys

Brian Reid, a parent writing for The Washington Post’s “Smart Living” blog, ponders why boys always get the cooler toys at fast food places like McDonald’s:

At your larger, more-marketing driven outlets, you have a choice: there is a “boy” toy and a “girl” toy.

At a rather young age, my eldest daughter determined that this was a total crock. She has a vivid memory of dinner at McDonald’s with a friend where “boys” were offered some cool spy gear and “girls” … well, she doesn’t have a vivid memory of that. Even though that’s what she found when she opened the Happy Meal.

He’s conducting an (admittedly unscientific) experiment to see whether fast food employees – when asked by a parent to “surprise” them with either a “boy” toy or “girl” toy – are more likely to give out “boy” toys, because they seem less gendered. (Via KidScreen.)

Aug 31, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"What We Need is Lots of Small Plastic Bricks"

Damian White, writing for The Times, has a rather unique solution to the UK government’s failure to adequately build enough social housing:

Could Lego have the answer? Its designers are superbly inventive. Surely it isn’t beyond them to produce some sort of heavy-duty waterproof Lego brick, of a less garish hue than normal, perhaps, that could be supplied for affordable kit houses that would appeal to housing associations, those seeking starter homes and even families looking for a modern detached home. Millions of Lego-lovers could assemble their own houses, perhaps with the help of builders currently out of work.

I like this idea. I like it a lot.

Aug 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Toys Unlikely to Get Their Own Movie

It’s sad, but true: not every toy in the world gets the chance to star in a Toy Story movie or have Hollywood franchises built around them.

OMGLists has – what do you expect? – a list of the top toys that are most unlikely ever to land an audition in Tinsel Town. Number #3: Wooly Willy, the magnetic facial hair board.

This was an exciting toy back in the day because, aside from shaving your grandpa when he was passed out from too much cheap whiskey, kids didn’t get the chance to change hair/facial hair around. Nowadays there’s The Sims and every other computer game around that allow you to change a character complete look. Suddenly dragging little pieces of metal around on a drawing of a bald dude isn’t as exciting.

Jul 23, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

View-Master: The Movie

The Hollywood Reporter:

Remember View-Master, the Fisher-Price toy with those little 3D picture discs of mountains, rivers and caverns that you could rotate through a viewfinder? Well, DreamWorks is in negotiations to acquire movie rights to the toy from Mattel (which owns Fisher-Price) and has asked Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to do some “Transformers”-style magic on it.

Heck yes!

Jul 07, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Business Week: 'Inside Disney's Toy Factory'

Damian Joseph takes a look at two of the House’s of Mouse’s top toy designers, and the duo’s process for creating some of the company’s most successful toys:

The pair attribute their success to a process they’ve refined since joining forces: a systematic brainstorming and prototyping process that supports the continuous innovation necessary to overhaul toy lineups every six months. It matches Mazzocco’s years of toy designing experience—a specialty that requires knowledge of child psychology and play patterns—with Heatherly’s experience in designing software, electronics, and other core technologies.

I love the first part of their approach:

Mazzocco and Heatherly point to three elements of the brainstorm sessions they say are crucial to success. The first is “icebreaker” activities—basically, fun contests that last anywhere from 10 minutes to a half-hour. When working on Club Penguin products, the teams held an igloo-building competition; for Disney Princess, they put on a fashion show. It sounds fluffy, but Heatherly and Mazzocco say the icebreakers break employees out of the workplace mind-set, help team members gain comfort working with one another, and ease the concerns of non-creative workers who might be intimidated by having to come up with designs alongside Disney specialists. “Some people want to cut to the chase. We tried it, and it just doesn’t work,” Heatherly says. “You really have to commit to the process. You have to have some decompression time to be creative.”

(Via KidScreen.)

Jul 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Toys 'R' Us Becomes One with the Schwarz

Two of the biggest names in the toy store biz are now becoming one: Toys ‘R’ Us announced they are now acquiring FAO Schwarz, America’s boutique toy store. (Apologies for the lame Space Balls/Star Wars joke. I really couldn’t help it.)

KidScreen reports that Toys ‘R’ Us will transition the merchandise, management, distribution and marketing operations to their company, but continue operating the two brick-and-mortar “flagship” FAO Schwarz stores in New York and Los Vegas under the FAQ Schwarz names.

I must be getting old: I’ve begun to have a love-hate relationship with most toy stores. When I was a kid, toy stores were actually fun. You could roam the aisles and try out different toys, racing remote control cars down the aisles and playing with the toy train sets. It was paradise.

Those were the good old days.

Now – okay, I admit I am old guy ranting here, but it is fun – toy stores are mostly about cramming as many packed-up-tight boxes on the shelves as possible. If you’re nine, the most you get to do is look at the photos on the box. Rarely (based on my experience) do you get to test out the toys in the store, and there’s also almost zip chance you’ll get to play with them in the car – it’s more likely you’ll have to wait until you get home and dad surgically extracts your new toy from it’s plastic packaging tomb.

That’s why I think FAO Schwarz is so cool. They’re strongly anti-packaging culture. They tend to stock toys that aren’t designed to make a quick buck – but are more open-ended and creative, meant for actually serious play. The sales people in their stores encourage you to hang around and play – the layout and design of their stores make it so you can stick around and spend a couple of fun hours there.

And, let’s face it, they also have those cool giant floor pianos videos. (I finally mastered chopsticks, at age 22, on the one in the Los Vegas store.)

We need more toy stores like FAO Schwarz. And we need Toys ‘R’ Us to realize what made FAO cool and keep them that way. (Maybe minus the steep prices… but that’s a different story.)

May 28, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #