Word: toying
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Instead, this promises to be the Year of the Classic Toy. Come Christmas morning, living rooms will be spread with some new variations on some old favorites: Lionel trains snaking around the tree, Barbie waving from her red Ferrari, G.I. Joe rappelling from the chimney with care. There will be Lego castles aloft by Christmas dinnertime, cabins carved of Lincoln Logs, and portraits etched on the Etch A Sketch. Even some new hits, like Lewis Galoob's Micro Machines, are souped-up successors to such staples as Matchbox cars. "All these toys have predictable long life," says Peter Harris, president...
...takes some magic and luck, and a grasp of that most chimerical substance, a child's imagination, to make an eternal toy. The best of them are infinitely simple and endlessly entertaining. There are nearly 103 million ways, for example, in which six eight-stud Lego bricks of the same color can be joined together. An artist in Colorado has re-created part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling on his Etch A Sketch. A classic toy, says John Brandt, manager of Toys International in Los Angeles, "is something where the child's imagination is the most important thing...
...Toy analysts also see some sociology behind the economics. Because baby boomers take their parenting so seriously, there is much murmuring about traditional values. Thus Kenner is pushing its Special Blessings doll, with Velcro hands that clasp and floppy knees that genuflect. The company wanted to develop a doll that "would appeal to a child's image of God as a big, * amorphous friend." Kitchenware is also popular. "I am getting my daughter a set of plastic pots and pans and a little stove and sink, which I also had," says Hillary Adams, 30, mother of Natalie...
...Teaching toys also sell every year because of those pillars of the toy store, the grandparents. If a toy is well made and useful, the grandparents will find it -- in many cases, because they played with it themselves. Crayola crayons debuted in 1903, Lincoln Logs in 1916. "Today grandparents have more time to spend with and on grandchildren than ever before," says Harris. "They are more likely to buy educational and developmental toys, and least likely to be reactive to fad items...
...merits of classic toys -- their durability, their simplicity and their imaginative appeal -- the greatest strength may lie not in the child's reaction to them but in the parents'. As mothers and fathers grow ever busier and more pressed for time, they frequently resort to toys that do the parenting for them: the bears that tell bedtime stories, the plastic heroes who teach virtue. For many children, a toy whose nostalgic appeal and sheer pleasure lure parents back into the playroom may be the best present...