LEGO®, the 83-year-old bricks-and-mortar Danish company famous for the LEGO brick, its most important product, which was twice named “Toy of the Century,” keeps on building its reputation for being one of the world’s best toymakers, with two entries – City Deep Sea Explorers 60095 Exploration Vessel Building Kit and Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle – on the Dream Toys Top 12 list compiled annually by the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association (TRA), representing toy retailers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The list was released earlier this month.
The privately held LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The name ‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt,” meaning “play well.” The company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.
The brick in its present form was launched in 1958. The interlocking principle with its tubes makes it unique, and offers unlimited building possibilities.
The Dream Toys Top 12 list is decided by a a panel of leading toy retailers in the United Kingdom, including Argos, Boots, Selfridges, Smyths Toy, The Entertainer, TK Maxx and Toys R US, and is considered one of the most accurate and predictive lists worldwide for annual Christmas toy popularity.
The City Deep Sea Explorers 60095 Exploration Vessel Building Kit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-EQ9dd7ZFE), recommended for ages eight 12, has 717 pieces and features a working winch, large wheelhouse, below-deck cabins and a lifeboat, and accessories that include include two mugs, walkie-talkie, binoculars, life preserver, welder, two boxes – and did I mention – 16 gold bars! You can activate the shipwreck collapse function and there is also a submarine. You should be able to pick up this bad boy out of your Christmas bonus for under $150 in Canada!
The eight-to-12-year old group accounts for 22 percent of toy sales, according to London-based The NPD Group Inc., a market research firm that tracks about 80 percent of the U.S. toy market, as well as working with the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association in the United Kingdom. NPD says the eight-to-12-year old group had been ignored in recent years because they’re the biggest users of mobile devices.
Anne D’Innocenzio, the long-time national retail writer for The Associated Press in New York City, wrote earlier this month that the U.S. toy industry is expecting to have “its strongest year in at least a decade after several years of kids choosing video games and mobile apps over Barbie and stuffed bears.”
Annual toy sales are projected to rise 6.2 percent to $19.9 billion in 2015, according to The NPD Group Inc. That’s up from a four per cent increase last year, and the biggest increase in the decade since the group has tracked toys using its current system.
The growth is being fueled, D’Innocenzio writes, “by increasing popularity of collectibles, toys based on Hollywood blockbuster films and better technology that allows toys to do things like talk back to children.”
Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle, which cashes in on the Star Wars theme with the upcoming premiere in Los Angeles Dec. 14 of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh installment in the main Star Wars series, has 1,005 pieces, and is recommended for ages nine to 14, and will set you back about the same amount in that $150 price range. It includes spring-loaded shooters, storage bays and detachable weapon racks, which you can re-arm.
The Force Awakens story is set about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, which was released in 1983. And yes, Harrison Ford is back as Han Solo, as is Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, more general than princess now. Thanks for asking.
LEGO® was also on the Dream Toys Top 12 list last year with the LEGO® Movie Benny’s Spaceship, one of only three toys on the 2014 list that were not battery-powered.
But for the many that are, toymakers are using chip technology, which is getting cheaper and more powerful, in toys.
Canadian toy company Spin Master Ltd. had the hit Zoomer Dino-Boomer last Christmas, which has an autonomous mode where via the sensors in his nose, Zoomer Dino-Boomer can go on the attack, or the same can be accomplished by picking him up and pushing his buttons, or using the control pod to send him on the hunt. He shows his moods through his colour-changing eyes and can even bust a move with his occasional dancing dinosaur routines. Spin Master is back this year with Meccano Meccanoid G15 that allows kids to build and program their own personal four-foot-tall robot that records and plays back audio and it learns from them. It has more than 1,200 parts and features 64 megabytes of memory.
Located on Front Street West in Toronto. Spin Master was founded in 1994 in a Toronto garage by college friends, Ronnen Harary, Anton Rabie and Ben Varadi, who had $10,000 between them. You know the type of entrepreneurial story. Twenty years later, Spin Master is an all-encompassing global entertainment, robotics, toy and digital gaming company, with a design lab in Los Angeles. It is currently the number three manufacturer in the games category in North America, with double digit growth.
Clive Shelton, owner of Clive Shelton Associates in Bromley, is a chemist and toy safety expert who advises the Toy Retailers Association. He says “there is more computer power in some of these toys than was used in the first mission to the moon. That is the age we live in. They prepare children for their future lives with technology.”
While updated versions of classic board games such as Parker Brothers’ Monopoly, the real estate game invented by Charles Darrow, an out-of-work heating contractor, which Parker Brothers’ began marketing on Nov. 5, 1935, and Mouse Trap, designed by Colorado’s Harvey “Hank” Kramer for the Ideal Toy Company in 1963, continue to do well year after year, experts said that they are more likely to be considered “family entertainment” and purchased as such.
There is much to be said for the charm of board games and train sets, and, indeed, toys– wood, metal and even plastic – from an older largely forgotten world now. I made my first visit to Toad Hall Toys on Arthur Street in the heart of Winnipeg’s Exchange District on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas in 2013 and it was simply, in a word, magical. And by no means forgotten by its loyal patrons.
Toad Hall Toys was established in 1977 by Ray and Ann England and is Manitoba’s largest and oldest independent toy retailer, priding itself, it says, “on our unique selection, old world charm, and friendly and knowledgeable staff. ”
The store, or course, takes its name from Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows. Today, the store is run by Ray and Ann’s daughter Kari. “We offer a vast array of products from over 50 different countries. Our mandate is to provide a unique experience that stimulates the imagination, rather than rotate through the latest mass market trend or fad.”
Indeed so.
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