You better watch out: This holiday shopping season could be one of the priciest ever as the most tech-laden and expensive gifts for kids of all ages, from the US$299 animatronic pony Butterscotch to a US$300 pinball machine, show up at your neighborhood store.
Even if Santa doesn't leave the elusive US$500 Sony PlayStation 3 under your tree, there's still Hasbro's US$249 Nerf Showtime Hoops, a basketball "gaming system" with an electronic scoreboard and a recorded voice that can announce whether your child has launched a "brick" or hit "nothin' but net!"
Or you can go to Wal-Mart Stores Inc to pick up a red Ford Mustang Power Wheels, a US$250 battery-operated car for children three years old and up. The Mustang is a Wal-Mart exclusive made by Mattel Inc's Fisher-Price division, though many other models can be found at other retailers, such as Toys "R" Us.
PHOTO: AFP
"Every Christmas season, [there are] more expensive toys," Scott McCall, Wal-Mart's chief toy officer, says.
This year, toymakers are pushing prices up even more, he added.
Toys have gotten more expensive for several reasons, industry executives and analysts said. The demand is there: Parents have shown a willingness to spend more on children's gifts. Meanwhile, toy companies are able to make more sophisticated toys because computer chips and robotics keep getting cheaper. The companies can then charge more for those high-tech toys.
PHOTO: AFP
Higher prices don't seem to be holding back sales.
"I would say that Butterscotch has exceeded our expectations," McCall said, referring to the newest member of Hasbro Inc's "Furreal Friends" product line.
Chris Byrne, a contributing editor for Toy Wishes, a consumer publication, said that expensive toys have always been available at high-end stores such as FAO Schwarz, which emerged from bankruptcy protection two years ago. What's notable this year is that mass-market retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp are stocking their shelves with more toys costing US$200 and above than they ever have.
One factor behind the trend is the global decline in the price of high-tech parts, such as computer chips and robotics. That allows toy makers to offer sophisticated toys at surprisingly low prices considering what the toys can do.
The "Butterscotch My Furreal Friends Pony," for example, is 91cm tall with moving eyes, ears, head and tail. The pony can whinny and snort and can be "fed" a carrot, and if children sit on her, she will "gently bounce," the company said.
"There's a lot of technology, chips and capacity sensors ... that the kid's not interested in ... but that makes the pony feel very real to them, and that's magic, and the Mom sees value in that," said Sharon John, general manager of Hasbro's Tiger Electronics division.
"Even five to six years ago, some of the stuff that we're doing ... for the prices that we're doing would have been technologically unfeasible," she added.
Butterscotch follows the animatronic Furreal Friends cat, dog and gorilla, John said. The idea for a pony came partly from consumer research.
"What little girl doesn't dream of having her own pony?" John asked.
For older children, the so-called "tweens" in the nine to 12 age group toy makers are offering higher-priced products that mimic adult high-tech gadgets, such as cellphones, DVD players and even video cameras.
For example, Hasbro's ChatNow is a US$75 two-way radio communicator that looks like a flip-style cellphone and comes with colorful stickers and faceplates. It even allows users to take and store up to 30 digital photos.
Then there's the US$249 Zoombox projector, which can connect to DVD players and video consoles. It projects movies and games on walls or ceilings with images as large as 1.5m.
For kids of all ages, including those who are only kids at heart, Zizzle LLC has introduced a freestanding pinball machine that it expects to be almost as popular among adults as children.
The Zizzle pinball game, like the Zoombox, illustrates another aspect of this year's pricey toys: In many cases they're cheaper than the full-blown adult alternatives.
Scott Goldberg, public relations and promotions manager at Zizzle, said their pinball machine has the bumpers, flippers and flashing lights of a real pinball game -- unlike the cheaper tabletop versions -- but at a much lower price.
An arcade-style pinball game is likely to cost thousands of dollars, he said.
One holdover from holidays past is that many parents consider the educational value of some toys a good reason to splurge. But we're far from the erector sets of old: Lego is selling the US$249 Mindstorm NXT, a wireless-enabled robot that kids can program over a computer.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS