Accoding to NPD, a research firm, families are using video games big time. After sports games and action games (each holding approximately 20% of the market), family games represent 12%, the next largest category. Though the press would have you think otherwise, nearly 50% of games sold are rated “E” for everyone. And the game [...]

What do kids really need when it comes to digital literacy and learning? And what are their ever-anxious parents willing to spend to get a leg up on the educational ladder?
For LeapFrog, the answer is the newly announced $69 Leapster Explorer. For the price, the features are awesome. It has a nice color screen (3.2 [...]

Remember Silly Putty?  It was born as the high tech replacement for rubber during the shortage in WW II. What about Winky Dink? The first interactive TV program that asked kids to lay a sheet of acetate over their TV screens and draw Winky out of a jam. Yesterday’s toys are tomorrow’s innovation.  Better graphics, better interaction, but is the [...]

Toy Fair, an industry trade show in NYC this week, is one of my favorite annual visits, because it’s a chance to be a big kid in a candy shop full of toys that the public has not yet seen.
This year’s show feels a little recession strapped in that the toy manufacturers are packing volumes of [...]

She wears a shirtdress decorated with zeros and ones over a pair of tight, shiny black pants. She’s got a Bluetooth headset in her ear, those smart-girl looking glasses, and a pretty pink laptop.
She’s Computer Engineer Barbie and she sprang to life via the popular vote of consumers all over the world. They voted on what Barbie’s [...]

It’s show time for the digital toy business. Time to trot out previews of the summer’s releases.  This season offerings has a few recurrent themes. First is low price. Almost all of the manufacturers are selling less expensive variations on their older toys.  The second trend is all about using the body and brain in combination. [...]

This holiday season is shaping up to be a practical, penny-pinching one for digital toymakers. While digital toys continue to be a growing part of the toy market, this year’s advances will be incremental, not revolutionary. And toymakers seem to be focused on the “little grownup” strategy, giving kids a scaled down version of mommy [...]

In the old days (just last week), before Nintendo’s new portable game console, the DSi, was available, portable game consoles were for kids with good eyesight, fast reflexes, and too much time on their hands. The DSi, the next generation of Nintendo’s DS, is going to shake things up by changing the nature of the [...]

Mario and Sonic are Olympians with a pretty impressive track record. Separately, Mario plays for the Nintendo team and Sonic plays for Sega. But when they join forces, whoa, stand back. They teamed up in Beijing to star in Mario and Sonic at the Summer Olympics and managed to sell over 10 million games as [...]

If organic food is better for the body, then what’s organic media? Chopped liver?
That’s the question that Amy Tucker, CEO of Matter Group and founder of a new kid’s multimedia property called Xeko, posed at a recent meeting of Women in Children’s Media where the subject was “green” media.
Xeko challenges kids to “Be a Force [...]