‘Twilight’ and Anniversaries Top Toy Fair
The life-size cardboard cut-out of Edward stopped me in my tracks as I walked the aisles at Toy Fair in New York this week. ‘Twilight’ was one of the newer licenses dotting booths at the annual toy industry show. Mattel has cast the Twilight stars - Edward and Bella - as Barbie dolls. Mattel also unveiled the newest Barbie career dolls: News Anchor Barbie and Computer Engineer Barbie, as voted by fans and getting good buzz at the show.
Anniversaries were another dominant theme at Toy Fair: Etch a Sketch and Slinky celebrate their 50th and 65th (wow, I’m old!); Hello Kitty is 35; and Hasbro introduced a round Monopoly game board in honor of Monopoly’s 75th.  The makers of Rubik’s Cube (a 360 client), which turns 30 in 2010, have rolled out a campaign to empower America’s youth to solve the cube - check out the Rubik’s Facebook page we just set up for the You Can Do the Cube campaign. You CAN do it!
Our friends at the Toy Book were offering to tweet show news for exhibitors. Simply stop by Toy Book’s booth at the Javits with your 140 characters and the editors will tweet it out. Social media made even easier. You can read all the tweets from the show at #toyfair.
Looking at the appointment schedules our teams booked up for clients, it was striking just how many more bloggers made it to the show this year. That added some welcomed immediacy and a real-parent perspective to the Toy Fair news stream. (Love to read your post if you want to leave a link here.)
And here’s one of my favorite Toy Fair images -Â one that caught the attention of FOX Busiiness - the New York City skyline sculpted out of Bendaroos (a 360 client):












