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.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS