Having found this holiday season that they cannot beat Apple Inc’s iPad, iPhone and iPod, toymakers have lined up a host of playthings that come to life when hooked up to the devices, gadgets that kids love to play with.
Industry insiders call them “Appcessories,” and expect a wide array of these items to be on display at the American Toy Fair, which officially opens to the public in New York today.
“The manufacturers have realized this is a hot area, and they are all jumping on it,” said TimetoPlayMag.com editor-in-chief Jim Silver. “It is an opportunity to extend the ages you are selling to.”
Photo: Reuters
The trend comes as companies, scarred by a holiday season when toy sales fell 3 percent in the US, look beyond traditional toys to woo tech-savvy kids, many of whom have grown up playing on their parents’ smartphones or their own gaming consoles.
“Today’s gamer is looking for experiences in games that include the marriage of digital and analog, face-to-face, and off the board gaming,” Hasbro Inc chief executive Brian Goldner said.
Hasbro, the maker of G.I. Joe toys and the Monopoly board game, plans to jump on the Appcessory bandwagon through its zAPPed gaming platform.
Photo: EPA
When you play with Hasbro’s The Game of Life zAPPed, you will still move your car from space to space and select your path to retirement on a game board, but now you spin, get paid, sue other players and make important decisions on your iPad, after downloading a free app. The game will cost about US$25.
However, Hasbro is not the only firm to have entered this arena.
Canada’s Spin Master Ltd is betting big on an array of accessories for Apple products as well as devices running Goolge Inc’s Android operating system under the AppFinity label.
“When you talk about the holy grail of toys, manufacturers have been trying to find a way to marry the tech and the toy world,” Spin Master spokesperson Harold Chizick said, adding that Appcessories might just be what they were looking for.
Spin Master hopes its AppDrive will appeal to racing enthusiasts by allowing them to use a steering wheel that can hold an iPhone, and play racing games using an app on the iPhone, while AppFishing will enhance “virtual fishing” using a rod that can hold an iPhone. Priced at US$20 each, they will hit stores in the fall.
Industry heavyweight Mattel Inc will try to broaden the appeal of its classic brands such as Fisher-Price Inc and Barbie, as well as Monster High through its Apptivity line.
One product in this line is Fisher Price’s Laugh and Learn Apptivity Case, which is basically a US$20 sturdy case that will protect parents’ iPhones from “dribbles, drool and unwanted call-making.”
The item, which features beads, a mirror and free learning apps, will help babies practice hand-eye coordination, Mattel says.
Toymaker WowWee Group Ltd, known for its little robot toys, will unveil its AppGear line, which combines physical toys with iOS and Android apps. For example, in Alien Jailbreak, which is an augmented reality shooter game, the player looks through his or her smartphone and tries to stop aliens from escaping from prison. AppGear products will be sold at about US$10 to US$20.
Companies such as Discovery Bay Games and Crayola LLC also hope to offer compelling products in this category.
Rising teen cellphone ownership, growing demand for mobile computing devices such as tablets, and the explosive demand for mobile apps are other factors boosting the trend.
As of September 2009, 75 percent of US teens aged 12 to 17 had a cellphone, a number that has steadily increased from 45 percent in November 2004, a study by Pew Research Center showed.
“Until now, traditional retailers or brick-and-mortars have been unable to tap into this huge growing market. They’ve been left out of the app party,” said Mike Gonzales, creative director and digital brand manager for WowWee.
Like many others, Gonzales now sees “an opportunity to take a bite out of the app pie.”
At an event earlier this week, Toys“R”Us CEO Jerry Storch summed up the trend: “The combination of the physical world and virtual world is so powerful that it’s almost unexplainable.”
One of Storch’s favorites heading into the year is the followup to Activision’s Skylanders, a video game that comes with physical toys that spring to life on screen when they are hooked up to consoles such as Microsoft Corp’s Xbox or Sony Corp’s PlayStation. A chip inside the figurines stores a player’s progress in the game.
The latest iteration, called Skylanders Giants, will feature characters that are taller and have new kinds of power. The newer characters can also light up without needing batteries.
“Skylanders will be even larger in its second year than its first year. It could be one of the biggest toy franchises of all time,” Storch said.
While the toy industry is betting big on Appcessories, a few parents are skeptical.
Amanda Bergman, a New Jersey-based Web editor and mom of two, said she would “probably not” buy toys and games that will come to life with a tablet or smartphone.
“Sounds like kind of a hassle, to be honest. I’d prefer to maintain the separation between toys and iPad. And I feel like the novelty would wear off quickly,” said Bergman, who normally lets her children, three-year-old Elliott and five-year-old Adrian, spend one to two hours on average on her iPad.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last