It’s a Tepid Year for Hot Toys

It’s been a week since the holiday gift-buying season started. And if you’re lucky, you haven’t been trying to find a Furby, the electronic plush toy that lives in clouds, speaks gibberish and has become as scarce as Tickle Me Elmo from a couple of years ago.

Welcome to the annual Quest for the Holy Hot Toy. And no, this is not a game from Sega.

Hot toys, of course, are relative and subjective things. They begin with the toy demands of kids, whose little lusts--and lists to Santa--are primed by advertising, television and movies.

That relationship among toys, tots and television hasn’t been lost on the $23-billion retail toy industry, which spent about 90% of its $875 million in advertising last year on TV. And the push this year, analysts say, has been toward electronics and away from dolls, board games and activity toys.

“When we talk electronics, we broaden it to mean not just Nintendo and Playstation,” says David Leibowitz, managing director of Burnham Securities in New York. “The dancing Tigger doll, the Furby, CD-ROMS, the hand-held Gameboy in color--they’re all going to be important products this year.”

Holiday-spending surveys say retailers should expect strong sales this season, and the Toy Manufacturers Assn. estimates families will spend about $350 per child.

Yet analysts also say toy sales themselves will run 3% to 5% ahead of 1997--slightly below its average growth rate--primarily because no items have emerged to fire up kids’ interest.

“Last year was pretty incredible . . . because of the coincidence of the ‘Star Wars’ re-release and its impact on action figures, and really robust demand for licensed items such as Ernie and Winnie the Pooh,” says John Taylor, a toy industry analyst for Arcadia Investment Corp., in Portland, Ore.

There’s no big buzz this year. Just a bunch of mid-level whirs.

Through October, the top-selling toys in the nation were driven by television: Talking Teletubbies, spun off from the British children’s TV show, and Bounce Around Tigger, from the Disney cartoon versions of A.A. Milne’s classic stories.

Other toys picking up high interest are the Sing Along Blue stuffed animal from Tyco Preschool, Spice Girls paraphernalia and new Barbie incarnations.

On the video side of things, there’s been high interest in the new Nintendo 64 game Ocarina of Time from the Legend of Zelda series, released just before Thanksgiving, and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid, an espionage game for Sony Playstations, says Matt Gravett, who tracks video-game sales for PC Data Inc.

Buyers for Every Picture Tells a Story, in Los Angeles’ Park La Brea neighborhood, try to strike a balance, stocking artsy toys that also embrace tradition, such as hand-painted pull toys, a shoebox-sized stage with magnetically manipulated characters, and classic Curious George memorabilia.

“We try to pick things that wouldn’t show up in most toy stores,” says Laurie Grosso, manager of the combination art gallery, bookstore and toy shop. “And we pick toys that are kind of artful. There’s a lot of retro. We’re very visual. We really buy half for the children and half for the adults. We have a very light heart.”