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By Carl Sullivan
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It's a parent's worst nightmare: the hottest holiday toy is impossible to find. Store shelves are empty. The nightly news broadcasts adults fighting over dolls at the local Wal=Mart. Remember the Cabbage Patch Kids? Tickle Me Elmo?
Fortunately, there doesn't appear to be a must-have item on Santa's list this year, according to Chris Byrne, a.k.a. The Toy Guy. For the past 25 years, Byrne has worked in some facet of the toy industry, beginning with a job writing assembly instructions for playthings. Today, Byrne reviews products (with the help of some wee assistants) for his newsletter, Toy Wishes, and various TV shows. He recently talked about toy-buying in 2004 with NEWSWEEK's Carl Sullivan. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: So how does a 48-year-old get to be known as "The Toy Guy?"
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Chris Byrne: When I first moved to New York I had only one skill, it was typing. [Laughs.] No, I could write too. So my first job was writing instructions and naming products. Over the course of eight years, I climbed the corporate ladder and was running public relations for the toy division at CBS [the broadcast network owned five toy brands at one point]. I later got a call from my former boss saying they'd found this little game in Seattle and would I come work on it? It turned out to be Pictionary, and I spent the next two years helping make that game successful.
Were you always a big toy and game person?
No, I loved toys and games, but I came to New York to be in the theater. I quickly realized I'm just not nice enough to be a waiter. [Laughs.]
So what are the hottest toys this year?
There are 150,000 toys on the market at any given time, but some of the toys on our hot dozen list this year are the Bella Ballerina, Hasbro's VideoNow Color and E.L.M.O. [an Elmo doll that sings to the tune of the Village People's "Y.M.C.A."]. However, the caveat for parents is that just because we say something's going to be hot doesn't mean it's going to be appropriate for your kid.
Do you think most parents understand that?
I really believe that they do, because I talk to a lot of parents and they go, "Well, gee that E.L.M.O. is really cute but I've got a 7-year-old boy. What've you got for him?"
So you don't foresee any Tickle Me Elmo-like craze this year?
I don't think there's going to be a hard-to-get fad hit. I always think that's a good thing because that means the focus is on the individual kids and what's good for them. There will be some really strong sellers but no single hot item. The Cabbage Patch Kids are back; they're doing really well. "The Princess and the Pauper" Barbie is doing really well.
So what happens in those years when a single toy becomes the "it" item?
That has very little to do with toys and a lot more to do with the fashion-driven nature of our culture. A fad is impossible to predict and very difficult to manage from a manufacturer's standpoint. But it becomes part of our culture. It's about having the thing that other people in the culture can't have.
So it's not really driven by what children want but by the adults buying into a fad?
Yeah, I think very often it is. Now, Cabbage Patch in '83 became something where a lot of little girls were asking for it and a lot of parents tried to snap them all up. Nobody anticipated that. It was impossible to forecast. I think what's happened in recent years is forecasting has gotten a lot better. People are able to gauge demand at an earlier stage and are more flexible in their manufacturing. Then there's always the eBay factor now--if you really want to get something and you're willing to pay a premium, you don't have to stand outside Toys R Us at 4 in the morning. You can go to eBay.
How do you forecast what's going to be popular?
It's much more an art than a science. You look at how kids are consuming--which is something we track every year. What are the trends? How are they playing? How are they interacting? And then looking at the toys that are coming out, you start to get a sense of what's going to rise to the top. First and foremost, you have to ask, "Is it a fun toy?" Then you say, "Is it innovative?" When you look at our hot dozen list, even though you see Barbie on it every year, Mattel continues to do breakthroughs in Barbie that really makes it new every year.
How do you decide if it's fun?
We look at what kids today are playing with and ask if the new toy has a play pattern that takes it to the next step. Once we get samples, we take them out and play with them with kids. What I like to do is give the toys to kids and see if they're going to return to them, because anybody can put kids in a room and they'll love everything. The question for me is, "Gee, do they like it enough to take it into their life and make it part of their world?"
Do these kids have any idea of what power they wield?
Absolutely not, and we never want them to because kids are so earnest about things. One of the things that I've found is that you have to tell them that they'll have to give it back. I've yet to find a kid who will say anything negative about a toy that they think is a gift. It's adorable. It speaks to [the fact that] there is some good parenting going on out there.
How much are kids influenced by TV?
TV is a huge influence, but peer kinds of interactions have kept Pokemon so hot for the last several years, even though it's sort of dropped off the adult radar screen. Ask any parent of a second or third grader and they're likely to tell you that Pokemon is very popular in their school system. As you look at things like cartoons and movies and TV shows, realizing how much of that comes into a child's world on a daily basis, it takes a lot for something to break through. So a story has to be very powerful or omnipresent almost for a child to begin to start to play that story. The Power Rangers are a good example. I think it's on TV seven times a week in most places. The mythos of that world becomes something that kids re-enact in their play but they're not replicating stories that they see on TV. They're using the Power Rangers almost as a totem of power and playing their own dramas based on that.
I have to ask: what's up with Potty Elmo?
It is new this year, and it's doing really, really well. We gave one to a boy who was going through potty training and it became like his best friend because Elmo was having the same issues he was having. It's about a 14-inch tall Elmo with a T shirt and a diaper and it comes with a potty. Randomly, the chip will go, "I think I need the potty." You have to put Elmo on the potty and if you're successful, he congratulates you. As adults, we tend to forget how critical that period of potty training is. It's one of the first times that there are real expectations put on a child.
If I'm stumped about what toy to buy, where do I begin?
Get to know the kid as best you can. Talk to the parents. In a perfect world, the toys you buy are an expression of your relationship with the child, but that's not always possible. I think understanding what the parents want for their kids is important. We see a lot of parents trying to set limits on how much kids are getting. They're getting frustrated at the competition to be the alpha grandparents, to give the most presents to the kids.
In-store or online buying: which is easier?
With online you can look at a lot of different resources in five minutes. We always tell parents to be very conscious of what the scheduled delivery and in-stock status is. You don't want to be biting your nails on Dec. 23 because you didn't get something. If people know what they want, we find that they're often comfortable buying it online. If it's a plush animal or something that will be in a crib or the child might mouth, that's something the parents might want to see in the store.
Where are most people buying their toys?
Wal-Mart is the No. 1 toy seller in the U.S., followed by Target and Toys 'R Us. The advantage of going to a specialty store is you can go in and say, "I'm trying to buy for an 8-year-old boy who likes to read, who does really well in science, what can you recommend?"
Any other advice for stressed-out parents?
I hear a lot about present overload where kids get too many toys. Some of the symptoms of that are kids ripping open presents and not playing with things and being disappointed that they didn't get things. Parents need to manage expectations as to what kids can expect on the holiday. I think there are many loving ways of doing that. I think back to my own mother. My parents were private-school teachers. I'm one of five kids. My mother would say things like, "Well, you know Santa's sleigh is very big, but he has to bring toys for all the kids in the world, so be careful about what you ask for."
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