"I guess you could say they're retreads, too," he said. "But they've never had remote-controlled cars so small."
Of the other sequels, Chicken Dance Elmo seems the most promising. When you touch the toy's big toe, it squawks: "C'mon, everybody, let's do the Chicken Dance."
Chicken Dance Elmo has one demographic going for it that the early Elmos did not have. "What's surprising is the number we're selling to teenagers and people in their 20s," he said.
Silver estimated that the stores will sell 1.3 million to 1.4 million Chicken Dancers by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. "Chicken Dance Elmo is blowing out," he said. Silver has also heard from stores that twice as many Barbie Rapunzels have sold this year, versus the sales of Barbie Nutcrackers by the same time last year. But that may not be saying much.
"Last year between Sept. 15 and Nov. 1 there weren't any toy sales at all -- nobody was shopping," he said.
Video-game sales this year have been disappointing, he said, along with sales of the Crayola Crayon Maker, which Silver had predicted a month ago was going to be spectacular. The more-expensive radio-controlled category -- cars and trucks costing over US$60 -- has also been slow; the RC Helicopter, a possible winner, has had delays getting to the shelves.
Friedman of Fisher-Price said that while the Spider-Man toys based on the movie started out "red hot," toys based on movie properties tended to slow down quickly. "Toys based on television last the longest," he said, because the preschoolers and other children watch them "over and over again."
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