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 inches and 320×320 pixels – which makes it a bit grainer than the iPhone, but a big improvement for LeapFrog) and 512MB of memory. It runs Flash (take that, iPad), will do 3D, and play video. A webcam attachment, due out later this fall, will cost $25. Both games and LeapFrog applets that are similar to apps on the iPhone will be available (in a proprietary format). The device is aimed squarely at 4-9 year-olds.

Underneath the device lies a decision point in parenting philosophy. The Leapster Explorer has a vast network of educational apps that reside on LeapWorld. LeapWorld allows for avatars and personal customization – though no social networking. There’s a Learning Path online component that lets parents monitor activities, get suggestions for additional activities, and quickly find products that address a particular skill.

Unlike earlier versions of LeapFrog apps, their new games and apps are much more fun, exploratory, and open-ended. Gone are the right vs. wrong answers and the whiny voices telling you “Good move” or “Try again.” The music is hipper and there’s a bit of a new edge. The underpinnings of what we used to call “drill and kill software” are eroding.

LeapFrog’s apps are proprietary in format. There are both games - similar to Nintendo’s DS - and learning activities – more like the Apple Apps store. Launch titles include kid faves like Toy Story 3, Disney Fairies, The Penguins of Madagascar, X-Men, Disney Princesses, and Dora the Explorer. Pop culture at its best.

While the $69 hardware is attractive, apps are actually more expensive than on the iPhone. While the Apple Store has no shortage of handsome 99-cent apps, the Leapster Explorer apps will be priced at $15 for two learning apps and for $25 a game. On the other hand, there’s a lot going on beneath the hood, tracking kids’ progress, and unveiling new games that make the additional price reasonable.

Can LeapFrog’s earnest and right-priced approach to reaching kids from 4-9 work in a world where parents are handing over $500 iPads, iPhone Touches, and DS machines to four year olds? The alternative devices are much more facile and able to satisfy the whole family at once. LeapFrog’s Explorer is a platform built explicitly for young kids.

At the moment, unfortunately, there’s no room for crossover. You can’t play LeapFrog games on an i-machine and you can’t play iPhone apps on your LeapFrog device. Sad.

My bottom line? More price-sensitive, more traditional parents and those who believe that kids belong in a finite kids’ educational world will flock to LeapFrog. It’s also a fabulous solution for the less affluent who want a sustainable system through the primary school years. Parents who are less hierarchical and believe in a cross-generational approach will choose the iPad.

Which are you? Think of it this way: When my kids were little, they had a toy vacuum. Playing with the real thing was not an option. The Leapster Explorer is an educational toy, albeit a powerful one. The i-machines are tools for grownups, with occasional kid uses. The Nintendo DS will always fare better at games than learning.

 This presentation ts based on a talk I gave at INplay in Toronto this week.  Click to take yourself down Toyland memory lane.  inplay-presentation

This year’s show feels a little recession strapped in that the toy manufacturers are packing volumes of value into their packages and not designing big expensive toys.

There was a time when plush animals costing thousands were plentiful on the floor.  Today’s show was a bit more austere but amazingly creative, which goes to show you that having less can sometimes be more.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Lego: Lego introduced a new breed of  board games at Toy Fair. Your job is to build the game out of Legos (and decide the rules of engagement) before you play.  It’s a brilliant idea–a twist on the family board game, capturing the love of Legos. What a mashup!  The digerati are awaiting Lego Universe, the company’s huge online world. Most of the games, like Pyramid (pictured here), are priced between $10 and $20.  At the high end, Creationary costs $24.

Mattel: Mattel’s star of the show was a dog collar aptly named Puppy Tweets. Once the collar is placed on the pup, he can send a tweet (or is it a woof directly to Twitter).  The USB collar uses Bluetooth to communicate with Twitter so proximity is important. For $30 it’s pure unadulterated fun–a mashup of pets/gadgets and social media. You can follow your dog and have them make other doggie friends on Twitter. 

E-readers: I wondered when the first e-readers for kids would appear and they have. Systems like Leapfrog’s Tag Reader have been serving the function of e-readers for a long time. Fisher Price announced a super-duper 5-in-1 product called the iXL. It’s a 3- to 6-year-old’s rendering of My First iPod, combining a photo album, e-reader, notebook, game machine, and music player into one crash-proof device.  Price: $80.

TRAKR: One much buzzed about fave on the show floor was Wild Planet’s new Sky Video TRAKR.  At the upper end of the price range ($129), this packed-with-technology gizmo is a toy that looks like a tank/robot.  You control it with a gameplayer-like remote control that has a small LCD VGA-quality screen, joystick, and buttons.  Using simple downloadable programs or even creating your own programs, the TRAKR transmits color video and audio and data.  It can memorize a path to your kitchen or be trained to scare the pants of your mom when she enters your room.  It’ll even have night vision just to make things interesting.

Talkatoo: Of course some of the coolest products are found in the recesses of the Javits Center, usually start-up companies with some very passionate owners.  For instance, there’s talkatoo–a small, colorful pendant that allows for a 30-second voice recording.   For $16 bucks, you can carry your kids’ voices everywhere with you.

TV Hat: Now here’s one that’ll have you laughing and shaking your head in amazement. But no one will be able to see you because you’ll be under the TV Hat.  This sub-$30 hat (or visor) has a tiny pouch for you to insert your iPhone or other video player. Underneath the hood, a prism brings the image into focus and built-in earphones create your own private studio.  As long as you’re comfortable looking like a cross between a Klu-Klux Klan’er and a HAZMAT worker, you will fall in love with the TV Hat–a poor man’s solution to TV glasses.  (Imagine each kid in your car wearing these in the back seat! You might get pulled over for kidnapping!)  Of course it made the worst of show list over at http.bored.com, but it’ll either be the next pet rock or not.

Geocaching: For the family that likes finding its way together, GeoMates Jr. from Apisshere is an entry-level $70 GPS.  It’s filled with 25,000 geocache locations from all over the country. Geocaches are markers or hidden boxes or anything you want that you place somewhere and mark its coordinates on a GPS map.

My Ami: Finally there’s My Ami–created by a mom after giving her kid an iPod and watching it tossed from the shopping cart one too many times. My Ami is a bear that conveniently holds the iPod or iTouch securely and out of harm’s way.  There’s the suction cup version for strollers or car seats and the clamp-on for shopping carts. Advocates of less screen-time for little ones will go apoplectic over this one, but hey, for many moms, it’s whatever it takes to get you through the day.

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 next career should be for the “I Can” Barbie Series.

Never mind that’s career  #125 on the Barbie chart.  But, to add to Barbie’s cred, Mattel worked with the Society of Woman Engineers and the National Academy of Engineers to make sure their creation was emblematic. (Easy to imagine a bunch of female engineers dressing up Barbie isn’t it?)

I’ve never been much of a Barbie lover–even as a kid I was more into decapitation and mutilation than dressing up my Barbies.  And I could make a ton of jokes about Binary Barbie the engineer.

But I won’t. Because if Computer Engineer Barbie could convince one young girl that it’s cool, OK, and even great, then Barbie earned her keep.  Mattel is providing girls with a code to get onto the Barbie website for online game content.  Hopefully, Barbie will be doing more than picking out the office furniture.

By the way, the next runner up? The #126 Barbie is a news anchor.  Both are being unveiled at this week’s Toy Fair in New York City and will be available this winter.

Barbie, all you’re missing is a pocket protector, a cup of Java, and some really unhealthy snacks.

You go girl!

The Last Gadget Standing was the very first event that I produced for CES. That was nine years ago. The premise of the contest hasn’t changed. At CES you’ll see hundreds of new product introductions. But, by the time the year’s out, a healthy chunk of them are never to be heard from again.

Last Gadget Standing was created because “the people” can spot the winner in the crowd of new products. Unlike journalists, consumers are not likely to be swayed by a gadget without a reason, or by bells and whistles that you’d use once in a lifetime.

Past winners of Last Gadget Standing include a host of notables, from GM’s OnStar to iRobot’s Roomba, to the Eye-Fi card. This year, we’ve got products representing all of the major CES trends. There are smartphones that are so smart they deserve a PhD, 3D technologies on notebooks and TVs, and sports/fitness gadgets that marry the backcountry, geocaching, and even music to exercise by. You’ll see new products that extend the traditional Wi-Fi coverage and products that give sight to those with deteriorating vision.

Will the winner be keyless access to your home, a personalized entertainment experience, or one of the new ebook readers?

It’s up to you. To get familiar with the contests, check out Robin Raskin’s walk down memory lane. Or entertain yourself with last year’s video-d session. You can meet our judges and just maybe, if you’re reading this far, then you might have The Last Gadget Standing.

Last Gadget Standing has been ranked the most popular SuperSession of CES and that’s because you have the vote, whether you’re watching online or with us in real time. The event takes place on Saturday, January 9, 2010, at the LVCC, Ballrooms N257 and 258.

So why did Disney decide to offer a full refund to families who bought its Baby Einstein DVDs because they were supposed to make baby smarter? It’s because Baby Einstein DVDs and Disney were accused of making false claims in their marketing materials. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) faulted Baby Einstein for stating that the software would improve infants’ thinking skills, thus paving the way for future Einsteins. According to news reports, the feud between Baby Einstein and CCFC has gone on for years.

I’m no lover of false or overinflated product claims, especially when it comes to kids, but the question of infants and screen time has never been more important. In fact, we should be steeling ourselves for an explosion of apps made to engage infants and toddlers.

YouTube is filled with videos like this one showing a one-year-old competently touching his way through an iPod. Sweet little applications like Old McDonald from Duck Duck Moose and Giggle Computer Fun Time for Babies are being used and enjoyed by kids barely old enough to touch and point.

To date, the authority of screen time and kids has been the American Academy of Pediatrics. Its position is that kids younger than two-years-old should have NO screen time. But that rule was a world ago, before interactivity and the ability to explore virtual worlds was an everyday reality. The main argument against screen time was that it didn’t engage all of a child’s modalities. Now that the world of touch has been added, the game may change.

Personally, I’ve admired Baby Einstein’s founder, Julie Clark, as an early pioneer in the stay-at-home-mom-turns-entrepreneur movement. I never thought leaving a baby in a crib to stare at a screen for hours on end was a very good idea, but most parents I knew used Baby Einstein as a way to participate: singing, pointing, and sharing with their children. It’s all in how you use the tools.

Baby Einstein and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood have both expressed their points of view. What’s yours?

Disclosure: My company, Living in Digital Times, is in talks with Baby Einstein about participation in an upcoming event.

Goo is back, reincarnated as an iPhone/iTouch app called Making Faces. It’s a hoot. Load in any image and, using your fingers, you can pinch, bulge, spike, twirl, wave, ripple, nudge, smear, and otherwise whack-out your images. Then turn them into a time-lapse movie. The true power of this $2.99 app won’t be fully realized until you can email your creation to friends, but in the meantime you can definitely have a load of fun making faces.

A Publishing System for Young Kids: Tikatok

The cofounder of this site was sitting in a bookstore with her kids when she realized that every book on the shelves was written by an adult. The epiphany? Create a site where kids can publish. Tikatok brings out the storyteller in every kid, allowing them to see the fruits of their labor shared with others on the web. Posting a story is free. Creating a book and selling it has varying costs depending on the size of the book. Story Sparks, an idea generator, helps those with writer’s block and it’s relatively easy to add artwork, too. (Average price for printed copies is around $20.)

A Stay-cationer’s Dream: Wii Sports Resort

Players participate in a virtual vacation on an island with 12 different activities. Basketball, table tennis, canoeing, archery—the games are eclectic and tons of family fun. Sports Resort is one of the first Wii games to use Motion Plus—Nintendo’s new accessory. It allows the game to track the motion of your forearm and wrist which makes table tennis and archery more realistic. But the new accessory adds to the price and doesn’t add anything new to older Wii games. ($49.99)

Summer of Apollo:

This one won’t cost you a dime. The moonwalk (no, not the Michael Jackson kind) has captured and re-captured the imagination of kids and adults everywhere. Earth.google.com/moon is a joint project of NASA and Google. You can zoom in and actually see the 1969 footprints from the first spacewalk and take an guided tour narrated by Apollo astronauts.

A Quirky Game for Teens: Little King’s Story

For the teens in the house, this quirky masterpiece mixes adventure, strategy, and a heavy dose of whimsy. The plot begins with a young king that inherits a mess of a kingdom. Done in something similar but not as irritating as anime style graphics, the game includes cultural references and clever innuendo as the king (you) assembles his motley crew of subjects. Be warned: there are scenes with drunken and crude behavior. Normally I’m no fan of the anime style nor lengthy multicharacter games, but this one seems to be the pacesetter. And if you don’t believe me, see what the gamers have to say. ($49.99)

And what should you be avoiding this summer?

THQ  Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter:

Just introduced on the Wii, this game combines kids creativity and game playing.  Using a set of familiar looking paint tools kids design their own characters to star in video games.  The characters can even articulate their limbs, giving them lifelike moves.  Once the character is completed you can  place it  in a simple game, drawing in your own obstacles as you go. You can even draw a bridge to get you across a river with a special action ink, or a draw a ball that bounces.  The game you play is the one you’ve created. That’s both inspired and loads of fun.
Leapfrog  Zippity 

Zippity looks like a cross between a pogo stick and a Dance Dance Revolution mat. It’s played on the Wii. Young kids will stand on the  mat,  with their stick held firmly in their hands . On a TV screen they’re be watching their favorite Disney characters and using the stick they’re interacting as they watch  Using Playhouse Disney characters like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey, Zippity presents  kids with dances to do, jumping and movement, and learning fun.  Priced at $79 it’s a mini-Wii game for the mini-est users.

NetPal 

A netbook of their own.  Disney and ASUS teamed up to create a $350 netbook designed for kids. That means safe browsing, parental controls with plenty of room for parents to adjust, customizable screensavers with themes from Disney’s Cars, WALL-E and others.

An ASUS netbook under its skin, the Netpal has an interface that’s all Disney. The keyboard is spillproof and a Shock shield protects the netpal  from damage due to  accidental drops.  Naturally it’s available in Princess Pink and Magic Blue.

Leapfrog Tag Reader Jr:

 Leapfrog’s Tag Reading System used a special magic digital pen to read aloud to young readers.  Now the youngest pre-readers get a Tag of their own, called Tag Jr.  Instead of a pen, the handheld device is shaped more like a big rubber stamp.  The child presses the tag reader junior to the book page and all sorts of things begin to happen.  Stories get read, songs are sung, shapes and colors called out.  The books are made of really durable heavy cardboard so the system is dribble and drool proof.

Imagine Series: For girls who dream about what they want to be when they grow up Ubisoft created a series of  unique videogame introductions to the working world. Last year the big hits were Imagine Doctor, Movie Star and Babysitter. .This year they’re adding artist, boutique owner, detective, fashion designers, salon stylist, zookeeper and a few others to the lineup.  The games have become quite successful. Each gives you a taste of a career with simple games from picking patterns for fashions to putting together clues to solve a mystery. For girls ages 6-14 available on Nintendo DS.