Word: mattell
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...capture shoppers' imaginations. Sales this year are expected to grow a meager 3.4%, compared with an average of nearly 6% over the past three years. The price of some toy stocks tumbled more than 40% in October, further than the shares of any other industry. Such leading firms as Mattel, Coleco and Worlds of Wonder all posted larger losses than usual in the normally slow first half of the year...
...hungry?" the doll is programmed to respond with a bright "I'm hungry. Let's eat!" The doll can also sense changes in temperature and may ask for a sweater if it is taken outside. Julie has encountered some rivals on its way to the toy stores. Mattel offers the precocious Baby Heather ($120), whose age can quickly change from six months to two years if its "grow up" button is pressed. Heather's blond head has several sensors that pick up sound, so it can turn and face the direction from which someone is speaking. Playmates, of La Mirada...
...Mattel's Captain Power adds an interactive dimension to the traditional video game. The toys are linked to a half-hour TV program called Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, in which the heroes square off against Lord Dread and his BioDread Empire. The television show is programmed with light signals that can be picked up by the viewers' hand-held PowerJets. Once the barrage begins, the show's villains hurl laser blasts at the screen, drawing fire from the player. If the PowerJet suffers enough enemy "hits," it ejects its pilot onto the floor...
...most controversial area, however, is toy-inspired shows, which are criticized by children's TV activists as little more than program-length commercials. "Where is it written that Mattel should control the decision making in programming for children's TV?" says Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children's Television, the watchdog group based in Cambridge, Mass. "People who want to produce children's programs with something to say instead of something to sell are zapped out of the system...
...activists are especially upset about a new wave of "interactive" shows, like Mattel's Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. The show, a live-action space adventure, enables children to play along at certain points by shooting at villains on-screen with a special Power Jet weapon (cost: $30 to $40). An electronic signal responds to each "hit" and tots up the . player's score. Charren argues that by encouraging children to buy an expensive toy to participate, such shows unfairly divide the young audience into "the haves and the have-nots...