Word: toy
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is the year of the action doll. Across the land, toy stores are alive with the sound of dolls singing, whining, cooing and crying; with dolls that dance, walk, clean and shop; and dolls that ride their own horses, posture in their own beauty contests and drive their own convertibles...
Troubles have piled up in Toyland partly because the economy has been sluggish. A toy is an easy purchase to put off. But some of the difficulties trace back to last year's Christmas season. In anticipation of high sales that did not develop, retailers stocked too many toys, especially Mattel's Hot Wheels, a combination of plastic tracks and miniature metal cars. Loads of Hot Wheels are now cooling off in warehouses or often being sold for six for $1, whereas one alone used to cost that much. Wary of being burned again, merchants have reduced their...
Parents are also taking a much more critical look at toys that are overpriced, overpromoted, easy to break and hard to repair. In consequence, this is the year of the staples: old-fashioned toys that are not encumbered with frills and are likely to endure. "It is no longer possible to sell parents toys that will hold the child's attention for a very brief time," says the sales manager of a big Midwestern toy company. "Any toy that is to be popular must draw the child back to it again and again...
Consumer groups have cited some toys as being too sadistic: for example, a do-it-yourself guillotine set that is fortunately too small for a child's head. The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women denounced one toy as sexist: a semi-nude doll that is strapped to a platform while a pendulum dangles above her. For the first time, doctor play kits are selling better than nurse kits. Mothers are telling their daughters that they no longer have to settle for being a nurse; doctor kits get them off to a more liberated start...
...their advertising and play up the creative side of their products. They are also switching their TV commercials from Saturday and Sunday mornings to prime time, when grownups also are the viewers. "The ad has to hit the family," says Herbert R. Sand, executive vice president of Ideal Toy Corp. "The child has to get the approval of his mother or father." But the manufacturers' best public efforts in the TV room may be thwarted by prospective parents' private decisions in the bedroom. Because of the decline in births in the U.S., the number of children aged five...