Toy Fair is a rather large test tube of possible fun. It’s been held, in recent years, at the massive glass-walled Jacob Javits Center in New York City, inside which there’s a swirl of new toys and that popular foreign substance we love here: video games.
There are many ways in which we can measure the effect of video games on society ā for example, exploring whether they cause crimes ā so through my eyes as a video game reporter, I see Toy Fair as another place to see whether video games might be ruining a pretty nice thing.
https://kotaku.com/the-doctor-who-said-video-games-cause-rape-explains-wha-5757307
There I was walking down an aisle of people selling sleds and noticing that very few people were in it. This was sad, I thought, and then I wondered: did video games cause this, too?
There aren’t any kids at Toy Fair. They’d probably be best to judge whether video games are 100% cooler than toys these days, or just 75% more fun. The people walking down a few miles of rows of new toys are adults ā reporters like me and lots of people in charge of stores that sell toys. What they’ve got to choose from include a lot of video game toys. Really, everywhere I looked, I saw Super Mario.
https://kotaku.com/the-best-oddest-and-video-gamiest-play-things-of-toy-f-5758953
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktOc_y9Gftg
There are booths full of Teddy Bears, but also a booth full of stuffed Angry Birds. Halo is all over the place too. Mega Bloks Halo. RC-controlled Halo. Halo action figures. Video games are a draw. The card game people at Fundex had theta Tetris Card Game stand front and center. The people who make the Scene It games were hooking people with a new Plants Vs. Zombies board game. Yes, any game could be turned into a toy, and plenty of toy people seemed ready to jump on board.
https://kotaku.com/the-halo-mega-bloks-are-more-impressive-this-year-5759340
At Toy Fair I was feeling bad for toys. Hey, if not for video games, I wouldn’t have been there. I felt I owed it toys to walk down the sled aisles, maybe power-walk through the stuffed animal ones. I see how toy people are trying to cope. Some are trying to get in on the new tech of video games and gadgets, like the people who made a board game that has room on the board for an iPad. One radio-control-vehicle toy company jumped on the Medal of Honor license, of all things.
https://kotaku.com/mega-man-duke-nukem-sonic-gears-of-war-3-twisted-me-5759217/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqQpT-X-oUM
In some places, I was able to lose sight of video games and see the wonder and potential of toys. I loved the flying blimp fish and the 4D Cityscape puzzles. There are people riffing riffing on Legos in interesting ways, for exampleā¦ the people doing the LaQ toys (that’s the aircraft carrier you see here). The people who are making the luxury edition of Clue probably have a fighting non-video game chance as well.
Around many corners, though, there were the likes of Activision’s Skylanders, which are billed as an amalgamation of toy and video gameā¦ the Toys R Us president was at an event Friday talking about how excited he was for these “interaction figures.” (Sorry, all of you boring action figures out there… your time’s up!)
https://kotaku.com/this-is-the-video-game-reinvention-of-toys-or-so-the-p-5758025
I wanted to say sorry to the toy people. Video games are an ever-rising tide, and I don’t want to see the sled-makers get swamped. In my second year attending Toy Fair, however, I saw more video game stuff than ever, and I wondered if toys can really hold out ā or if they, like so many other forms of entertainment ā are going to be bent by the zeal people have for video games. Good luck resisting video games, toy people.
