A cellphone for baby? Absolutely.
A pretty, pink laptop for your kindergartner? You bet.
And when making your list and checking it twice, don’t forget Forever Barbie and her fuzzy pal, Tanner, the dog who eats, wags his tail and poops. Accessories include Barbie’s very own pooper scooper.
What little girl doesn’t dream of that?
This holiday season, Santa’s sleigh had better come loaded with a tech-support specialist to service the bagful of animated-automated-techno toys aimed at the very youngest believers.
There’s not much doubt the rallying cry from the toy aisle this year is “Interactive!”
Marketers and manufacturers have applied the term to nearly all their must-haves as they shove microchips into toys, games and stuffed animals to make them move, wiggle, shout commands or mimic adult products.
Even old-school classics like Twister and Candyland now come with DVDs so they can be played from television screens. There’s also a $49.99 interactive teddy bear that “reads” a story and asks questions.
It’s enough to turn some child-development experts into Scrooges. They complain that these “smart toys” rob children of their imagination.
A reflection of reality?
Toymakers say the trend simply reflects the technology-driven world today’s children are growing up in. Parents are caught somewhere in the middle.
Some say they are troubled by the offerings this year, like the teething key ring for 6-month-olds that comes complete with keyless entry buttons, or the “talking” kitchen for 3-year-olds that “reads” recipes from inserted cards.
Others are simply confounded by the application of the technology.
“How much reality does a child need?” asks Deanna Valesquez of Engelwood, of the toys that perform bodily functions.
Yet no matter how conflicted parents may be, it hasn’t stopped many from buying.
Consider Butterscotch, a 3-foot-plus- tall pony that moves its head when stroked, whinnies, munches on a pretend carrot and retails for about $300, roughly half the price of a real pony. Butterscotch has been selling out as fast as it hits store shelves. The automated equine is going for close to $500 on eBay.
“I really hate what’s happening,” laments Kristi Fricker, a Denver mother of three kids, ages 10, 8 and 6. “Why does everything have to move or make noise?”
Though, in the next breath, she adds: “I do end up buying some of that stuff because it’s what they want and it’s what all their friends have.”
Sure, there are always the old-fashioned toys, the so-called timeless ones, the kind that don’t do anything. They are typically either very inexpensive or quite pricey.
But for many little Santa watchers, those creative-play toys pale in comparison. From her perch in the front of a shopping cart, Victoria O’Hare punches at a cellophane-encased plastic horse in the toy aisle at Target.
“Mommy, where do you push the button?” the 4-year-old asks in puzzled indignation.
“No, honey,” Eileen O’Hare replies, “That one doesn’t talk.”
“I do worry she needs too much stimulation to be entertained,” she later confides.
Bob Friedland, corporate public-relations manager for Toys “R” Us, says all this realism is really no different than the Easy-Bake Ovens that appeared two generations ago and are still sold today.
The biggest change is that technology has become so inexpensive, it can now be easily added to modern toys to grab kids’ attention.
Which is precisely what bothers Diane Levin most.
“They’re amazing at what they can do, but all of these ‘smart’ toys don’t make for smart kids,” says Levin, an education professor at Wheelock College in Boston who specializes in early childhood. She is also co-founder of the Coalition for a Commercial Free Childhood advocacy group.
She complains that the so-called interactive toys are actually passive. The toys do all of the work, leaving children less inclined to make up their own storylines and adventures, which experts say is crucial for early development.
Levin is especially concerned by this season’s push of technology on the diaper and sippy-cup set.
“Infants and toddlers are the new growth industry,” she says.
A young, tough audience
Half a decade ago, pre-kindergartners were the youngest target market for the LeapFrog line of interactive story books. This year, it introduced a line for babies.
Marketers call it “age compression,” where items once geared at older children become favorites of younger and younger kids.
In today’s world, children are “aging out” of toys at much younger ages.
Just ask Dakota Velasquez.
When making his Christmas list, the world-weary fourth-grader included only six items. When asked why, Dakota replied: “Well, Dad, there’s not much out there to impress a 9-year-old.”
Still, not every parent finds fault in the trend. In fact, some love it.
Nancy Holst, an Engelwood mother of three kids ages 11, 5 and 3, calls some of today’s electronic toys a huge boost in learning. “My son learned his letters through LeapFrog phonics,” she says. “He went into pre-K reading.”
Lorrie Browning, general manager of Playskool, a division of Hasbro toys, says the real key is balance. Her company makes both conventional toys, like Play-Doh, and interactive ones. She does admit, however, the electronic ones tend to get better display in the toy aisles.
In the end it’s up to parents to decide what is appropriate, she says.
So with the countdown to Christmas on, Fricker, the Denver mom of three, says she’s been slow to toy shop this year.
“I’m kind of putting it off,” she says. Then she smiles. “I’ve been trying to talk them out of a few things first.”
Staff writer Jenny Deam can be reached at jdeam@denverpost.com or 303-954-1261.
