Word: toyed
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...always figured that a rodent who drives his own car would be able to withstand the recession, right? As retailers ramp up for the all-important holiday shopping season, at least the toy stores know that they have a hit on their hands. Fuzzy, electronic toy hamsters called Zhu Zhu Pets are flying off the shelves at major outlets like Walmart and Toys "R" Us. Demand for the pets is so high that Zhu Zhus, which retail for $8 at Walmart, are going for $60 on secondary-market sites like Amazon.com and eBay.com. The hamsters, which have names like...
...Zhus selling so well? First, they cost less than $10, a price that is right for the times. This season, families are looking for small, low-cost collectible toys instead the big-ticket item. "There isn't a hell of a lot of high technology in the Zhu Zhu Pets," says Sean McGowan, a toy-industry analyst at Needham & Co. "That's how they are so damn affordable." (See pictures of people shopping on Black Friday...
...even if the idea of a lifelike rodent crawling around your carpet creeps you out a bit, you must admit that the critters are kind of cute. "They have a degree of realism to them," says McGowan, who predicts the Zhu Zhus will spur the biggest toy craze since Tickle Me Elmo was on shelves in 1996. "They appear to be thinking about what they are doing. That's endearing...
...your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. "We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them," Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. "When you cut the toys and clothes back ... the kids really like it." He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics...
...public also got the chance to vote on what they would save during a showdown between five of the university's professors, each of whom passionately defended an item dear to their hearts: a mass-produced gouache painting of Mt. Vesuvius, a marsupial mole preserved in formaldehyde, a 1960s toy car, an ancient fragment of painted wall plaster from what is now a London suburb and a collection of Victorian-era death masks. One professor put it best: "These objects don't have an intrinsic value." But each has an interesting back-story. The toy car, for example, belonged...