Word: toy
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Leaf Men By William Joyce (HarperCollins; $15.95) Sentimental and old-timey, The Leaf Men tells the teary tale of a sick old lady; her garden, which withers because she can't tend it; and a lost toy, a little metal man, that she misplaced years ago. This odd story is entomologically incorrect, no doubt, because it also deals with good bugs, bad bugs and a villainous spider queen who must be killed by the heroes--mysterious green leaf men. What make Joyce's book exceptional are his vivid paintings of a scary, moonlit tree climb to summon the leaf...
Candidate David S. Goodman '97-'98 said the council needs to work on getting immediate results, and he used a walking toy dinosaur to emphasize his point...
...Wyatt, president of licensing for Fox. And not all spin-offs are aimed at junior. Estee Lauder, for instance, is currently marketing a line of makeup called the Face of Evita. But the best bets for merchandising, according to Wyatt, are family films with a strong fantasy element. In toy terms, "creatures do better than representations of people because kids can project a broader fantasy into their play." A more practical problem with human-based toys is getting actors to sign off on their likenesses; another is getting the likenesses right in the first place--a difficulty exemplified by Space...
Because of the nature of the business--it generally takes about a year to design and manufacture a toy and then ship it all the way from Asia, where it is typically made--the battle lines for next summer are already drawn. Hasbro, a licensee for The Lost World, a Jurassic Park sequel, even persuaded the filmmakers to incorporate what promises to be an extremely toyetic dino-chasing truck into the film's plot--a nifty cart indeed...
Schwarzenegger's Howard Langston is, in contrast, based more or less on life models. We've all been where he's going--on a desperate last-minute search for the overhyped toy without which a kid's Christmas morning will be miserable. In this case the problem is exacerbated by the absence of Turbo Man, a perfectly awful action figure, from available shelves and by Langston's rivalry for the elusive doll with one Myron Larabee (the comedian Sinbad), a bomb-toting mailman who has gone permanently postal. Director Brian Levant envisions their holiday world in cheerily surreal terms...