Radio Workshop

Revolutionary Toys (Transcript)

by Dianne Finch

NARRATION:

(SOUND OF FAIR - THEN TRAIN...)

It was wall to wall tech at this year's toy fair where thousands of vendors flaunted bells and whistles, robotics and nostalgia, as they vied for attention from buyers around the world.

Technology this year is well hidden and more life-like. Germany's ZAPF Creations featired Baby Annabell, a doll filled with motion and sound sensitive chips, the face is soft and moves when it cries, yawns or drinks from a bottle. Maybe a bit too real.

Brian Curry - Zapf Creations:

(Cry Sound)

She'll come alive and she'll start to cry, and then if you want to have her suck on her bottle you just stick her bottle in there and she'll suck on her bottle.

(cry sound)

NARRATION: Toddlers to university students are using Lego-like components with magnets, sound chips, light and motion sensors to build simple models and robots to fully-functioning factories. Lasy of Switzerland's Mosha Lam demonstrates how a child programs a computer to make their toy walk, talk, bend, and even move objects onto conveyor belts.

Mosha Lam - LASY of Switzerland: Here's the multimedia to make a picture, we draw a picture, OK, the kids like it very much,

(motor sounds).

Now I make some sound for you and put it in a database and change the frequency of the sound, I can control the frequency so it change OK?

NARRATION: The traditional Erector set by Brio Toy still features the wheels, gears, shovels and battery-powered motors, but Frank Catalano, a toy industry technology analyst, says that new materials are in use, but not necessarily obvious.

Frank Catalano:

And then you also have Erector which has been around for 90 years, and they've come out with thier new design line of Erector, and this is molecular metal, it remembers its position so you can bend it to make a toy, to make a model, and it will automatically bend back to its original position.

NARRATION: Catalano says that these trends toward life-like and real-world technology accompany another trend - going retro.

FRANK CATALANO: But what's really happening is that class toys are being updated with subtle technology inside of them and there is an industry estimate now that 70 percent of all toys are tech toys, whether its a battery pig or it needs a lot of power or a sensor or a 286 computer chip that a nerd might sneer at but its perfectly fine for play value.

NARRATION: But - not all companies are on the technology runway. Lego Systems is featuring the old-fashioned air pump, which has been used for over a century. Ryan Kelly says that focus groups show that parents want to see what they had as kids.

Ryan Kelly - LEGO:

This one for example is a back hoe, and you pump it with air and it uses hydrolics, so that you can move it and you can actually use the shovel on this backhoe, no batteries at all, it is all pump action here on the top with air.

NARRATION: And Rob Frankel of ANICO PLUSH Toys, prefers to keep life simple.

ROB FRANKEL - Anico: Probably our classic teddy bear is our number one best seller, we are classically a low technology kind of company, our toys are pretty much more about a sensory feel as opposed to something that has a preoccupation with chips, and our toys last a long time, and are not fad-driven wheras in two years they are in the back of the closet.

NARRATION: But, with all the sounds, movements and flashy lights, one can always find one of Frankel's teddy bears at an amusement park.

This is Dianne Finch, Columbia Radio News.