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The brisk toy and board-game sales were set up, in part, by the decline and fall of the video game. Capricious young people rapidly cooled toward them in the fall of 1983, and retailers were stuck with huge oversupplies. At the same time, stores last Christmas were caught short of such traditional items as dolls, trucks and board games. Video-game retail sales this year are off sharply again, down 56% during the first nine months vs. the same period in 1983. Fueled partly by money that had previously been spent on expensive video games, sales of other kinds of toys moved along smartly right from the beginning of 1984 and have stayed high.
In toyland's aisles throughout America last week, it was lurch and grab. Retailers were selling out fast of popular items as soon as they restocked shelves. Tonka has told some storekeepers that they can expect no more shipments until January of its hot-selling GoBots, innocent trucks and vans that turn into ferocious robots. Transformers, clones of GoBots that are made by Hasbro Bradley, are also in short supply and are now outselling their rival.
Toy marketeers seem to have guessed right in determining what would sell. Fisher-Price, the toymaking subsidiary of Quaker Oats, teamed up with Kodak to produce a new child's camera that sells for $25 to $44. In its viewfinder is an indicator that shows a red flag if the child is holding the camera crooked. Fisher-Price has long made a play camera, but the one this year was its first foray into the real thing, and it is selling well.
Marketing techniques are slicker and more irresistible than ever. At one time, toys were copied from movie, television or newspaper cartoon characters. Examples: Snoopy and Mickey Mouse. Now that is reversed. Toymakers vigorously promote their own elaborately executed concepts. They create the character and then license rights to the storybooks, school bags, furniture, clothes, greeting cards and TV shows that go with it. American Greetings started the trend in a big way in 1980 with Strawberry Shortcake. Similar hits this Christmas include Care Bears and Masters of the Universe.
Parents who try to buck the marketing efforts of the toymakers by even so much as thinking about more conventional gifts will need a division of G.I. Joes to hold their ground. When asked what they want for Christmas, most children will parrot the names of popular toys. Jennifer Been, 7, of Dallas advises that she wants a Cabbage Patch Kid, a Cabbage Patch stroller, a Fisher-Price camera and Lego building blocks. Says she: "Almost every girl in the second grade has a Cabbage Patch Kid."
Carole Lockman of Wayland, Mass., has always looked for toys that were "intellectually of good quality." But she confesses, "My 13-year-old wants anything to do with Michael Jackson." Joseph Zaitchik, a University of Lowell English professor, and his wife Holly play chess with their eight-and four-year-old sons. Some of their gifts this year will be traditional: a microscope, for example, and a baseball bat. But something new is also trundling in. Says Holly Zaitchik: "My little one is into cuddly things. He wants a Care Bear, and I've bought him one."