Toys for a Fantastic Cause

Every year, 300,000 American children must be rescued from perilous home environments—abuse, neglect, violence, trauma. When those children enter foster care, they often show up with little more than the clothes on their backs. Can you imagine how it feels to suddenly leave behind everything familiar without even your favorite blankie or even your toothbrush?

That’s exactly why the Toy Industry Foundation (TIF) and My Stuff Bags Foundation have teamed up to give distressed children a little comfort in the form of a blue duffel: a bag filled with toiletries, handmade blankets, clothing, and of course, a cuddly toy to ease the shock of the transition.

At this year’s fair, dozens of toy exhibitors are getting behind this cause by donating their toy floor samples—everything from Elmo and Barbie dolls to children’s books. “The children are extremely excited when they receive the bags,” says TIA Foundation Manger Amanda McDorman, who took part in last year’s distribution of toys to elementary school children. “Some of them just scream in shock, joy, and disbelief. The bag is a message that someone cares about them—and that’s exactly what a child needs to feel when he or she is in crisis.”

Look out for some fluorescent on the floor today: K.I.D.S. (Kids in Distressed Situations, Inc) volunteers, dressed in a blinding-orange T-shirt, will wander around the Jacob Javits Center booths, collecting the toys to be donated. Throughout 2009, the toys will be handed out to children of all ages, from infants to 18-year-olds; the duffel bags are gender- and age-appropriate. This May during National Foster Care month, My Stuff Bags Foundation and TIF will organize a special toy distribution.

And here’s the best part: You don’t have to be a Toy Fair participant to make a mega-difference in the life of a distraught kid. First of all, you can send some moula via the website mystuffbags.org (and yes, it’s tax-deductible). But even if you’re running a bit short on cash—and who isn’t these days?—you can donate new, non-edible, non-violent, and non-denominational items to My Stuff Bags. What kinds of things do people send? You name it—from crayons, books, and school supplies, to hand-held games, crafts and small photo albums.

Bonus if you happen to live or are planning to visit sunny Southern California, the volunteer center at My Stuff Bags could certainly use your help in stuffing the bags. Call 866-3MY-STUFF or visit www.mystuffbags.org for more information.

The Family That Plays Together: Games and Toys That Reconnect Us

There was a time when mom, pop, and the kiddos could spend eons gathered ’round a Monopoly board on a weekend night. That was then. In an age where most of us have more face time with our Blackberries than we do with our children, squeezing in even 4.2 minutes of eyeball-to-eyeball fun has become a Herculean feat.

Enter this year’s crop of toys—from the everyone-plays variety to the newest generation of board games—that are designed to bring families closer. When dad and former exec David Schoenberger wanted to re-connect with his kids, he invented a game entitled Family Matters ($24.99, for 2 to 6 players, ages 7 and up). “Families work harder than ever before and enjoy less quality time together,” Schoenberger says. “The familiarity past generations took for granted is now a distant dream with everyone so busy, distracted, and exhausted.”

Schoenberger’s 45-minute game uses a set of 120 cards to explore real-life situation and so-called “fake family crises”—for instance, each player pretends to be another person in the family while discussing, say, how the family has changed since a sick grandparent moved in to live. Another aspect of the game invo lves a “weekend wish,” in which players describe the activity they’d most like to do with the family. The included playbook allows parents to record their children’s weekend wishes and later use the ideas as fodder for planning a real-life outing.

This July, look out for a family-friendly update to the classic Lego collection: With the Builders of Tomorrow Set ($29.99, ages 4 and up), parents and kids receive a versatile collection of bricks—then, courtesy of a linked Website offering free step-by-step building instructions each month—they can continuously switch up their creations as a team. The site also features family stories, building challenges and contests, and a photo gallery for sharing creations.

If you want to shore up your children’s critical reasoning skills (sneakily, by all means ...), pick up the visual perception game that has toy critics and schoolteachers buzzing: Set ($12). Using 81 cards, players race to find three cards (out of 12) that form a set, based on color, shape, and shading. Once family game night is over, tweens and teens can continue the fun: The techie version of Set ($29.95) is a travel-worthy handheld that contains four levels of difficulty on a full-color LCD display screen.

Feeling a tad over the hill with all this high-tech business? Get back to the basics with a few recently-updated USAopoly (usaopoloy.com) ga mes that give a head nod to us old-school gamers. Check out Trivial Pursuit: The Beatles Collectors’ Edition ($39.95, available August 2009); for the first time, Beatles aficionados can test their knowledge of the band with 2,500 questions on topic such as history, music, and travels. Seinfeld junkies can get a fix with Monopoly Seinfeld Collectors’ Edition ($35.95, available in August 2009). The game features the characters of Jerry, Kramer, George and Elaine, and the game board includes locations that the sitcom’s fans will recognize: Jerry’s Apartment, Monk’s Restaurant, and the Soup Kitchen.

Finally, there’s my personal fave for LOL group fun: Telestrations, which does double duty as either a family or party game. Telestrations ($29.95, available in September 2009) keeps players guessing as they sketch a word they’re given and pass it along. Expect spontaneous giggling as players do their best to guess at others’ sketches. Look out, Pictionary: Telestrations has a real shot at becoming 2009’s party pick. Brownie points for the game’s creators: Since you can play as few or as many rounds of this game as you’d like, you can squeeze in a family laugh-fest in as little 15 minutes.

Tailoring Sans the Sewing Machine: A New Way for Girls to Play Dress-Up

For all the muttering in recent years about offering children gender-neutral toys, let’s face it: Most girls still like playing dress-up as much as most boys like playing with toys that go crash, boom, or ka-bang. In 2008 when seamstress Kari Kawa wanted to give her then-5-year-old daughter the same hours of unlimited creativity that a LEGO set provides her 7-year-old son, she got an idea: Why not offer children the opportunity to design personalized get-ups, starting with a pink-and-white polka dot dress form and dozens of vibrantly-colored swaths of fabric?

One year and several spools of thread later, Kari’s lightbulb moment has become one of the hottest new trends in girls’ dress-up. Through her company, Style Paige LLC, Kari created Shailie—an award-winning design kit that comes with mix-and-match sleeves, skirts, tops, sashes, and trims that can be attached to a dress form with Velcro fasteners, then worn around the house during playtime. You could call it a Project Runway for kids: Without needing a sewing machine or patterns (hold the applause, moms), your daughter can experiment with a DIY fashion line.

At the 2009 Toy Fair, Kari and her team turned their booth’s aisleway into a catwalk (by the way, you can swing by anytime and see them at booth 6323). On February 17, Kari invited two students from New York’s FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) to participate in a designer face-off. After gathering passers-by judged the final designs (onlookers voted by clapping most loudly for the designs they loved best), Kari ended the contest by squeezing into the winning designs and strutting down the makeshift runway to show off the creations.

Got a girl who’s a bit, um, chubby? With childhood obesity on the rise in this country, you’ve got gobs of company. Though Shailee is designed for average-sized girls between the ages of 5 and 13 (the dress form is actually based on an 8-year-old’s frame), fear not: The set’s expandable skirt, for instance, can fit a girl with a waist of up to 45 inches—oh, the wonders of Velcro. And even if your girl can’t manage to squeeze her booty into one of her own designs, Kari says that many Shailie lovers—particularly tweens, teens, and yes, even some women—simply enjoy testing out new looks on the dress form; some buy their own fabric to expand their wardrobe options. Oh, and one more thing: You can order in two sizes—Little Miss (ages 5-7) or Miss (ages 8 and up). The dresses in the Miss set are longer.

Nickel pinchers, brace yourselves: The Shailee starter kit retails for $255 (the set includes a dress form, a base outfit, a few skirts and a sash, and a sparkly top); additional clothing kits run betwee n $30 and $120. The owner, Kari, is showing mercy to our pocketbooks with a special offer she concocted right here at Toy Fair 2009: Cash-strapped parents can buy just the dress form for $150; or the base outfits can be purchased for $89. You might consider this a kind of layaway plan: first comes the form, then comes the fabric—and finally comes the chance for your kid to engage in a kazillion hours of creative fun.

Imagination Makes a Comeback: Toys That Encourage Creativity

Once upon a time, you could hand an 8-year-old just about any ordinary object—a bottle, an old shirt, a spool of yarn—and in about six minutes flat, that child could create a makeshift toy amid an entire make-believe world. This year’s fair ushers in a renaissance of creativity-inspiring toys—playthings that awaken children’s sense of originality, innovation, and curiosity.

Take Faber-Castell’s Creativity for Kids line. The company has introduced several new DIY kits—starting with Tiki Girl Jewelry ($18.50), a set that includes wooden and coconut beads for designing bracelets and necklaces. Then to store their new wares, children can design their own Mosaic Jewelry Box ($19.99, also from Faber-Castell) using more than 300 vibrantly-colored acrylic tiles and glitter grout to decorate a plain white jewelry box, and then transform it into a sparkling masterpiece. And if you’re into things that sparkle, Crayola is the can’t-miss, no-mess destination for all things glittery and colorful. In fact, Crayola’s Color Wonder Magic Brush took home a Toy of the Year award as the best activity toy.

While we’re on the topic of girls’ play, skedaddle over to the KidKraft website to have a look at the tri-level, solidly-constructed Georgia Peach Dollhouse which includes 13 pieces of masterfully-designed furniture and can accommodate dolls that are up to 11.5 inches tall (Photo: Bonnie Biess, AOL). At $145, it’s certainly pricey—but before you ban it from your shopping list, consider that it could provide your little one with years of exactly the kind of playtime that engages the brain’s imagination center. One more thing: The wooden exterior makes this dollhouse oh-so retro—which means you just might have to resist the temptation to elbow your daughter out of the way so that you can play, too.

Got an American Idol junkie on your hands? Steer the child toward Acting Out Musical Dress-Up, which has won 14 national toy awards. Every outfit—from the hula skirt to the petticoat ($44)—comes with a musical device hidden in its front pocket. Songs include the Hokey Pokey, You Are MY Sunshine, and even Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Two intrepid mompreneurs from New Jersey began the company five years ago, after watching their daughters dress up as princesses and dance around the house. That observation was followed by their ah-ha to just add music. PS: Boys can get in on the fun, too, with the Reversible Musical Adventure Cape ($32), which features a pirate design.

Jewelry, dollhouses, even outfits that sing—what more could a kid want? Perhaps more pals, play dates, and ice cream than they could ever dream up.

Envelope, Please: Hottest Pocketbook-Friendly Toy Picks

At February 15th’s Toy of the Year (TOTY) awards—the Oscars of the toy world, held this year at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers)—the Toy Industry Association (TIA) unveiled its top plaything picks.

Out of courtesy for your wallet—and because so many Americans are either already holding a pink slip or, let’s face it, desperately trying to avoid one—I’ve organized the list of TOTY winners to bring you the toys that rate best on our price index (Translation: You can simultaneously play Santa this year while keep some cash in your checking account).

Did I mention that a relatively steep price doesn’t necessarily mean you should altogether nix a toy from your shopping list? That’s because each toy should be evaluated in terms of its quality-price ratio (the cheapest toy might be poorly constructed, while a seemingly expensive toy could last for a decade and, hence, prove its worth). You should also consider what industry insiders call a toy’s “play value.” A toy with a high play value, for instance, can provide entertainment and educational stimulation during both the initial and subsequent play sessions—and it’ll likely keep your child engaged for years to come.

Here’s the list all of us tightwad toy lovers have been awaiting—from the least expensive TOTY winners, to the most (PS: Scour the net for the best possible price):

$7.95—Outdoor Toy of the Year. Crayola racked up a win for its 3D Sidewalk Chalk, with a price so reasonable that you can afford to be generous with your friends’ children. Kids create their own specialty designs with intense colors that come alive with the provided 3D glasses.

$14.95—Game of the Year. Bananagrams is the high-speed word game that requires no pencil, paper, or board. The price is as right as the amount it takes to play—as little as five minutes. Because the game is uber-portable, you can keep the kiddos busy while you’re waiting in restaurant lines or taking family road trips.

$17.99—Specialty Toy of the Year. Create Your Own Pop-Up Books, by Creativity for Kids/Faber-Castell USA. This DIY book-making kit includes enough stickers, markers, and story starter ideas to guide your child in his or her first self-publishing venture. The set comes with two hardcover pop-up books and simple-enough instructions for children to complete without a lot of hand-holding from mom and pop.

$24.99—Toy of the Year and Boy Toy of the Year—Spinmaster’s Bakugan Battle Brawlers Battle Pack Series 1 Spheres garnered the gold in these two categories for one very good reason:=) Boys around the world have answered the call to brawl with small spheres that magically morph into indomitable Bakugan warriors.

$29.99—Most Innovative Toy of the Year. The big winner at this year’s TOTY, Spinmaster claims a third victory for its Air Hogs Zero Gravity Micro. What’s not to love about a remote-control sports car that can move across the ground, up a wall, and even upside down on the ceiling?

$29.99—Activity Toy of the Year. Add a battery to Crayola’s Color Wonder Magic Light Brush and, ta-dah, the brush lights up as it magically recognizes the paint colors in the pots. The key word with this toy is mess-free: the paints appear to be clear (good news for your walls and sofa), and it’s only after you put the paints on the included Color Wonder paper that they come to life.

$45.99—Educational Toy of the Year. LeapFrog’s TAG Reading System might seem a bit steep—until you recall the lifelong residual returns on building your child’s vocabulary and teaching him or her to love reading. Bonus: The Tag library includes over 20 books and games featuring characters from TV, movies, and classic tales.

$69.99—Infant/Preschool Toy of the Year. Fisher-Price’s Elmo Live actually speaks as his mouth opens and closes, he waves his arms, he sits and stands, and he tells jokes and stories, and he even dances. If you can stand his constant chattering in the background, Elmo just might help you squeeze in a nap while your children play among themselves for at least a half-hour.

$99.99—Girl Toy of the Year. Playmobil’s Horse Farm is the perfect example of a toy with a high play value, which makes its price a tad easier to swallow. The farm’s realistic details—seen in everything from the ponies to the kittens—will encourage endless hours of imaginative play.

$149.00—Electronic Entertainment Toy of the Year. Hasbro’s FurReal Friends Biscuit My Lovin' Pup can actually take orders—the pooch recognizes six commands including “sit,” “speak,” and “lie down.” The dog even wags his tail and barks. The cost just might send die-hard spendthrifts into cardiac arrest. But what’s the value of finally getting to play the big boss? For some of us, that experience is priceless.

Barbie Turns 50—and Shares the Anniversary Spotlight

Whatever secret contention I might have with Barbie—those perfectly-perky breasts, that itsy-bitsy waist, the Stepford-wife grin that makes feminist pioneers quiver—I’ve nonetheless gotta hand the woman her kudos. At 50, The first lady of Mattel is still hot. Really hot.

It’s hard to believe that five decades ago on March 9, 1959, the first Barbie prototype made its debut right here at the Toy Fair. And now, at a time when Barbie must certainly be headlong into perimenopause, the fashion icon’s creators spare no expense in celebrating Barbie’s big anniversary with the liberal use of a certain color—girl-power pink.

This fall when the Pink World Line hits store shelves, our daughters will likely begin hounding us to purchase the affordable $14.99 Barbie FAB Girl (in this iteration of herself, Barbie embodies a PDA-toting intern who transforms into a fashionista by evening, with a quick updo and a reverse-striped pencil skirt). And wouldn’t it be just so cruel to keep the leggy lady homeless? As scores of us are fighting to keep our real-life mortgages out of foreclosure, Barbie is apparently surviving the recession rather comfortably: Her new Dream Town House (you guessed it—it’s pink in every imaginable shade) is a hefty $149.

If you can forgive Barbie’s apparent disregard for real American women's figures—and with some therapy, I’ve let it go—you’ll discover just how well she encourages a gutsy-girl spirit among the children who play with her. Since Barbie sashayed into toy stores around the world, the Renaissance woman has had exactly 108 careers—as a surgeon, a TV chef, a presidential candidate, even a Sea World trainer. In Fall 2009, she’ll add two more jobs to her résumé via the Barbie I Can be series: newborn baby doctor and preschool teacher (both $23.99).

When it comes to anniversary galas, Barbie has plenty of company. USAopoly’s Simpson’s TV is celebrating its 20th; The Pink Panther, Sesame Street, and Nerf all made it over the hill to 40 this year; And the Smurfs, Candyland, and Little People join Barbie for the big 50. Finally, there’s one of my personal faves, Madame Alexander’s Madeline—the cloth doll who comes complete with a series of storybook adventures—is as adorable now as she was when she was introduced in 1939. Since 70 is apparently the new 40 for the unstoppable Boomer set, that means our dear Madeline has at least another seven decades to delight us.

Raising Kids Who Care: Toys That Titilate as Well as They Teach

Teaching your kids to do what’s right—from recycling and collecting canned goods, to sitting up straight and saying please and thank you—used to mean encouraging your children to be, well, a tad too earnest. But this year’s crop of do-gooder toys can actually help you turn out more well-mannered, more eco-sensitive, and yes, even more culturally-conscious little Americans—without turning your children into total snores.

Take Curious George—that mischievous monkey (and by the way—how come that little punk never ages?) teaches tots how to become good neighbors in a new game called Super Helper (retail $12.99, I Can Do That! Games, icandothatgames.com). Players flip over three cards to discover who could use an extra hand at, say, the local firehouse or—hallelujah for moms—in the living room to tidy up. Designed for 3-to-8-year-olds, Super Helper’s ball bouncing, dice tumbling, coin flipping, and prize stickers make the game virtually boredom-proof—all while sneaky parents teach their children the value and fun of pitching in to assist others. PS: The player who does the most to help out also wins the most points and—you guessed it—the whole game.

Rather globe gallop than monkey around? Give your kids a passport to another world by nabbing one of the international, multi-ethnic Karito Kids dolls and its accompanying storybook (MSRP $99.99, karitokids.com). I know, I know: In these economically precarious times, the price tag seems a bit steep—but it’ll ease the pocketbook pain to know that girls are encouraged to donate a portion of the doll’s retail price to a global children’s charity. And the dolls get bonus points for cultural accuracy: The dolls’ facial features are ethnically correct. Even for kids who are missing the humanitarian-aid gene, having a new pal from abroad is cool enough all by itself—whether that friend is China’s Wan Ling (at last, a doll that proudly touts its made-in-China heritage . . . ), Gia from Italy, or Piper Whelan (the newest hottie from Down Under).

Speaking of Australia, meet Bonza the Kola—a furry friend who is on our world’s most endangered species list. Enter Conservation International, the company that teamed up with Tales 4 Tomorrow to combine animal conservation with fun activities for kids. When a child buys any one of 16 plush toys made of soy and cotton (retail $19.99), the child also receives a donation code that, woila, magically grants the kid access to the website (tales4tomorrow.com). Once on the site, kids can play games, watch videos, and send Tale Mail to friends, and—drumroll please–select one of the four Endangered Species Programs to which 5 percent of the proceeds of their sale will be donated. So kids get the privilege of choosing where their dollars might serve best—be it in saving Tanzania’s big-eyed tree frog from extinction, or curbing the trade of wild tiger parts.

Got kids who totally don’t give a rip? Direct them to a peer who just happens to be our planet’s youngest eco-czar—a 4-year-old whose dad asked her to draw her version of an environmentally-friendly family. Dad Shai Adiram turned his daughter Dylan’s design into a line of vibrantly-colored stuffed animals called The GreeNees ($20 each for any one of the five family members, thegreenees.com. The product ties in with a book that came first: Every Father Thinks He Can Write a Children’s Book. In the story, The GreeNees do plenty of kvetching as they take on the challenge of teaching others to be green. Mr. GreeNee—lead fighter in the war on global warning, if you even believe global warming exists, that is—guides the family in doing everything from growing organic to using solar power. Says founding father Shai Adiram: "Our goal is to empower our daughter to actually care about the planet we all share,”

With 2009’s spate of do-gooder toys, any parent—from animal lovers to even those, like me, who just adore a cute-ola doll or two—can pass along the habit of civic participation. And as it turns out, doing something good can mean having gobs of fun.

Up, Up and Away: Toys That Take Flight

Who couldn’t use a bit of a lift during these white-knuckle inducing times? Scores of 2009 Toy Fair attendees discovered precisely such a boost at the World’s Largest Levitating Objects, an event organized by the toy wizards at Unitech (Booth 5921, daily showings at 11am and 2pm, unitechtoys.com). Using Unitech’s signature product—the FunFlyStick magic levitation wand ($26.95) that emits a static to raise Mylar tinsel high into the air—demonstrator Olga Ousherovitch wowed oglers by elevating an enormous tinsel ball.

Move over, Harry Potter: There’s a new secret sorcerer in town. Though FunFlyStick is approved for children 5 years and up, Unitech execs have stumbled upon a loyal market among an unexpected audience. “Men just love this gadget!” says Ousherovitch, VP of sales and marketing at Unitech. “Maybe it’s a power thing—there’s something addictive about using the gadget to make an object move.” Memo to Olga: Let us introduce you to some females who would share in the power grab.

What else is, um, up at this year’s Toy Fair? Plenty—including Megatech’s radio-controlled, indoor-outdoor Hopper-Fly helicopter (see megatech.com for price information). The ’copter hovers at 100 feet in the air (with a little help from nine batteries, that is) and it comes complete with a charging station and transmitter. The counter-rotating blades ensure that even a novice pilot can navigate smoothly—before bringing down the aircraft for a landing that would make eve pilot Sully (a la miracle on New York’s Hudson) quite proud.

If planes and wands aren’t quite your obsession of choice, come with me to a galaxy far, far away. This fall, Uncle Milton Industries will finally release the toy that Star Wars geeks and 1980s kids (yes, I’m one) have been awaiting. At $129, it’s a touch pricey—but we would-be Skywalkers might’ve guessed that being able to control a Jedi Training Remote with the latest brainwave technology wouldn’t exactly come cheap.

Here’s what’s so freakin’ cool about the Star Wars gadget: The deeper you concentrate as you wear the headset, the greater affect you have on the Training Sphere, a ball that moves up or down a cylinder based on how well you’re focusing. After 15 levels of training (may the force be with you), you can progress from Padawan to Jedi Master. Familiar movie character voices (think Yoda) guide you through the process.

Oh, and one more thing: For another game involving mental acuity and biofeedback technology, you should also check out Mattel’s new MindFlex game ($79.99 this fall,mattelbrandsmedia.com). Users navigate a customizable obstacle course only the power of the mind—and maybe just a smidgen of perseverance to keep the ball afloat.