March 2004
Business West Magazine
A World of Fun
Dreams Are on Display at the Year’s Biggest Toy Fair
By Joseph Bednar
The American International Toy Fair, the toy and game industry’s biggest showcase for media and buyers, features plenty of well-known names, such as East Longmeadow-based Hasbro, but anyone with an idea and a game board can make their pitch here — and they do, by the hundreds.
At one end of a long row of colorful booths sat a display of Holy Bears, a line of stuffed animals made in Texas and emblazoned with inspirational messages, like “God bless our home” and “Sisters are special.”
Only a few hundred feet away, at the other end of the row, a Pennsylvania outfit hawked Teddy Scares, macabre, disfigured critters with names like Redmond Gore and Rita Mortis. Promotional materials warn, “you slept with them every night. And then, one day, you dumped your teddy bear ... Nevertheless, they‘re back from the dead, and they’re pissed.”
There aren’t too many places where bears from such different worlds can be found in the same room. The American International Toy Fair, held each February in New York, is one of them.
The Hasbros and Mattels of the world were on hand last month, of course, but in many ways, the three-day expo — which encompasses the massive International Toy Center on Broadway and the Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s West Side — is dominated by hundreds of small companies, game designers with a few products and a dream.
Still, with buyers and press descending upon the year’s most visible toy exhibition, the industry’s lead players don’t underestimate the potential impact of the fair.
“It’s the first public showing of the 2004 line,” said Mark Morris, director of public relations for East Longmeadow-based Hasbro Games. “The reality is that our major customers are familiar with what we’re doing from back in October, but for the media, as well as licensors and potential tie-in partners and many other people, this is the Detroit Auto Show for our industry.”
And whether companies were giving tours of room upon room of product displays, as Hasbro did, or simply helping a small operation grow larger, as in the case of the Easthampton-based Box of Golf, the International Toy Fair offered plenty of reasons to feel warm and fuzzy. Or gruesome and vengeful, if that’s your kind of bear.
Girls and Boys
Back at Hasbro’s Manhattan headquarters, on the 11th floor of the Toy Center, Wendy Upson was talking not about bears, but dolls — and how the computer age has brought change in the way they are designed.
Take Secret Central, for instance, said Upson, public relations associate manager. Each doll in this line comes with a note with some insight into her background, as well as a ‘locker combination.’ When those numbers are entered on the product’s Web site, girls can uncover daily journal entries from their doll. At the end of the year, the doll ‘graduates,’ and new dolls become available thereafter.
“Girls are very social, and they want to know what’s going on in their lives and with their friends,” Upson said. “Today, girls are on the Internet, and they like to talk with their friends online. So they can do that and follow the storyline in this fantasy world.”
“Ideally, we like to make games that are gender-neutral, that appeal to both boys and girls,” Morris told Business West later on. “But the reality is that we live in a world that says, ‘I want you to market to me.’ So we make sure we can meet the demands of all our customers.”
Cover to Cover is a good example of a game that appeals to girls on multiple levels, he said. Fashion magazines are included in the game, and players race each other to find specific items requested during play — a photo of someone with pink hair, for instance — to earn scoring cards.
It has an element of cooperativeness — ‘this is what I found in my magazine; what did you find in yours?’ — but it also has competitive play, and we find that’s a very strong combination,” Morris said.
Because Hasbro serves so many demographics, it helps to have a set of guiding principles when developing games, he continued, and they take the form of five questions. The first is the most obvious: is the game fun?
“It sounds simplistic, but we ask,‘is this a truly enjoyable experience?’” he said. “We don’t want a game to just kill time.”
Three other questions branch off from that basic one: what is the object of the game, is it challenging enough, and is it non-frustrating? Morris said designers have to walk a fine line there because a game can be ruined by being either too easy or too difficult.
Finally, he said, “is this a fresh experience? My favorite example is Scrabble — you can play your whole life and never play the same game twice. I’ve talked to national champions who play every single day, guys who memorize the dictionary, and they say they learn something new every day.”
“But it all revolves around fun,” he emphasized. “If the game’s not fun, you’re nowhere.”
Morris had a little fun himself, demonstrating the new, preschool-targeted Whac-a-Mole game, a miniature version of the classic arcade game. But the young set is hardly the only age group with something new to look forward to from Hasbro.
Boys might be drawn to Heroscape, a game which features customized warriors campaigning on an interchangeable, interlocking board — a combination of role-playing games and action figures, two long-time standbys for that demographic. If they’re feeling a little more active, boys can play a simulated paintball game on their TV screen with Tiger TV Mission: Paintball, which marries toy guns with infrared technology.
Many of Hasbro’s family games hearken to the past, with new updates of classics including Sorry! Card Revenge — a card-based version of the popular board game — and Wheel of Fortune Live Play, in which players can download actual episodes of the syndicated game show and use a hand-held device to compete with the other three contestants.
Taking Their Swings
But for every update of a classic game at the Toy Fair there were scores of small companies — sometimes just a husband and a wife with an idea — pushing something new. Box of Golf, the golf-simulation board game created in Western Mass., is one example.
“We’ve never done a toy fair before, so this is an experience — but a good experience,” said Gigi Rock, vice president of marketing and sales for the Easthampton company. Among other versions, she was busy touting the ‘deluxe’ model, which uses 24-carat-gold game pieces, as well as the Royal St Andrews version, a simulation of the historic Scottish course — and the first in a line of Box of Golf versions that replicate great courses.
Between stints at their booth, Rock and other Box of Golf employees landed on the CBS Early Show, and also delivered a game to Matt Lauer, host of NBC’s Today show and a golfer himself. But as much exposure as the fair afforded the game, Rock said response is more enthusiastic when they take it to actual golf events, such as the Phoenix Open in January.
“We spend a lot of time in the golfing arena because that’s where our high volume is — the golfers and tournament directors who come and purchase games as prizes or gifts,” she said. “But even though our biggest market is golfers, any time we can come here and meet with buyers and distributors, it’s a good thing. We had Europeans over to see us, and they were very interested in taking the game back to Europe. So it’s great exposure for us.”
Some themes popped up repeatedly while perusing the booths — such as tie-ins with popular movies and television shows. The Lord of the Rings is a popular partnership to have these days, while Hasbro’s many licenses include products based on Shrek, Star Wars, and the Kim Possible TV show.
“Licenses are an important part of our job as a toy and game company,” Upson said. “Not only do you want to produce fun and innovative toys and games that provide a great experience, you also want to be involved in licenses that marry well with existing brands, or allow you the opportunity to bring home the experience of these properties to kids and parents.”
Experience is a word Upson and Morris came back to often, insisting that they’re not selling toys and games as much as they are selling quality time.
“We’re in the game-experience business, which means we want to provide a fun and rewarding experience for everybody, whether it’s a preschooler playing Candyland or an adult who gets to be the fourth contestant in Wheel of Fortune.”
That, to many exhibitors, is what the American International Toy Fair is all about — using a big experience to create long-lasting small ones. And that makes for happy game makers — if not always happy bears.
Joseph Bednar can be reached at bednar@businesswest.com
