Brand-Name Buying Game : Orange County Toy Retailers Tally Winners, Losers of 1992 Holiday Season; ‘Anything Aladdin’ Is Hot

So you saw it on TV and you bought it. You spent $30 on the Monkey Loves doll as a Christmas gift, but for three weeks it has spent its days face-down in a corner of your daughter’s bedroom, loveless and demoralized.

What’s worse, your daughter lavishes hours of attention on a $5 green-haired abomination called a Troll doll--a toy so old that you had one as a child.

“It’s all part of the Christmas game. It’s all part of the gamble we take,” said Richie Diaz of San Juan Capistrano, who, by necessity, is philosophical about the ever-changing dictates of toy-giving. His 10-year-old daughter, grateful though she was for the in-line skates she found under the tree, insisted they be exchanged for a pair of brand-name Rollerblades before she could appear with her friends with confidence.

“We were understanding about it,” said Diaz, a father of two. “All consumers buy into the top-brand-name game. . . . I guess we’ll be happy as long as she doesn’t start asking for cigarettes by brand name.”

As parents begin their recuperative procedures after yet another frenetic season of toys, toys and more toys, Orange County toy retailers are sorting out the winners and losers of what many say was their busiest Christmas sales season in several years. Nationwide, sales also were up: Totals at the 540 Toys R Us stores were 10.7% higher than in 1991.

“It was much better than last

year, but I’m glad it’s over,” said Diane Reed, head of operations at Toys R Us in Anaheim. Nintendo and Sega CD video games were the hottest items, she said, along with “Aladdin” and “Beauty and the Beast” merchandise.

“Every little girl had to have something ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ and the ‘Star Trek--New Generation’ action figures were very popular, especially for the collectors,” she said. “We had to take rain checks for the Deana Troy figure.”

Business also was good at Play Co Toys in Lake Forest, said assistant manager Joy Whipple.

“For boys this year, the uglier the toy the more popular,” she said. “We sold out of the Monster Face at Christmas. It has the head of a skeleton and comes with jars of slime that ooze out of the face. Also, Crash Car Dummies sold, and The Claw--it’s a truck that becomes an animal. His feet become claws.”

For girls, standouts included the Barbie Fold ‘N’ Fun House, the Easy To Do jewelry-making oven and the Color Blasters craft game.

At Toy City in Fountain Valley, the Nerf Bow and Arrow was a hit, along with the Puppy Surprise doll and “anything Aladdin,” said manager Vivian Haddeow.

But like every Christmas season, there were the toys that, if they moved off the shelves at all, were doomed to play second banana to the Barbies and Trolls of the world. Among the losers at Play Co Toys in Lake Forest were Monkey Loves by Playskool, Atari’s hand-held Lynx game and the Bucky O’Hare action figure by Hasbro.

Flops are a fact of life in the toy business, where products--except for “classics” such as Barbie, Monopoly and Legos--thrive or perish based on consumer tastes (which among children are about as unchanging as a weather vane).

“The life cycle (of a toy) can be cut short for any number of reasons,” said Jill Krutick, a leisure-products analyst with Salomon Bros. in New York. One recent example of a failed Christmas strategy, she said, is Tyko’s Ariel mermaid doll, which a year ago enjoyed strong sales through its tie with the movie “The Little Mermaid.”

“Management tried to resuscitate the doll and create a market that didn’t exist,” Krutick said. “It resulted in millions of dollars of cancellations.”

The Sega computer games were a Christmas success but did not detract from Nintendo’s high sales, analysts and retailers said. Electronic video games now account for $2.8 billion in annual sales, which is a fifth of the total U.S. toy market, Krutick said. They’re also appealing to a progressively older customer. “As this happens. . .video will have less effect on the traditional toy maker” in terms of competition, she said.

Last month, purchases of these high-ticket items apparently did not mean consumers bought fewer low-price toys, according to Carol Fuller, national spokeswoman for Toys R Us in Paramus, N.J.

“We discovered that (consumer spending) was eclectic,” she said. “It went from the inexpensive, like the Nerf toys, to the expensive Nintendo. The best thing to compare it to are women’s skirts last year: Any length is in, anything goes.”

Play Co Toys, in an effort to improve its early-season cash flow, began a layaway program in August. At the last minute, however, many customers either canceled their layaways or exchanged them for other items, Whipple said. Also, many customers shopped very late in the season.

“Kids’ Christmas lists kept changing,” she said. “What can parents do?”

What you do, of course, is tolerate a certain amount of capriciousness, which some children seem to have in good supply at Christmastime.

Michael Koepsell, 8, of Yorba Linda exercised his right to modify his wish list throughout the season. “Unfortunately,” said his mother, Sandy, “I went out in the beginning and got what was on the list. Then I had to go out again.”

Certain key items on his list, however, never saw the underside of the Koepsell Christmas tree.

“He asked for both Sega and Super Nintendo, but we got him neither,” Sandy said. “He’s got Nintendo already, and I was supposed to buy all the things for Sega Genesis too? Then there’s Super Nintendo, but no games from regular Nintendo fit that, either. It’s crazy.

“There was some jealousy, because a lot of the (neighbor) kids got Sega, and a neighbor got Super Nintendo. He’ll just have to go over there and play it.”

Tops, Flops Orange County’s most popular toys: Barbie and accessories by Mattel. Car Crash Dummies by Tyko. Radio-controlled vehicles by Tyko and others. Star Trek action figures by Playmates. Video games by Nintendo and Sega. Beauty and the Beast, Batman and Aladdin items. Troll dolls by Russ. The flops in Orange County: Ariel doll by Tyko. Monkey Loves by Playskool. Lynx hand-held video game by Atari. Bucky O’Hare action figure by Hasbro. Magic Motion craft game by Tyko. SOURCE: Orange County retailers