Toy Fair! (AKA, read the post below mine)

I went to Toy Fair along with Thom Hines, Scott and a few other folks on Monday and looked at almost all of the same exhibits. I guess I should have been quicker to post.

The Tandars were definitely the most lifelike toy at the fair (although there was a booth selling sleeping dog toys that were almost creepy in their resemblance to actual napping dogs). They had a wide range of movement, could talk with one another, and most of all just looked alive. We taked about how they had a strong resemblance to the Gelflings from Dark Crystal, except instead of requiring a team of puppeteers, there was just a computer inside. Although the Furby craze has certainly died down, these guys seemed like a good improvement.

We also saw a set of tops that were motorized to keep spinning and were able to battle by being controlled by magnets under the table. They were fairly simple, but had a cool Tron look to them.

The best thing I saw was the prototype for Skylanders, a cross platform video game. Although the actual gameplay seemed somewhat generic, the game will feature about 50 characters, all of which are represented by small figurines. When the figures are placed on a special platform, they are brought into the game and can be used by the player as their character until another figure is swapped out. More than one figurine can be placed if two players want to play. The characters advance and get new skills and attire as they play, and all of this information is stored on the figurine, allowing them to be brought to friends houses and used there etc. I like it because it brought a trading card element to the game since players could trade their high level character for something else, and the actual physical object has value in a way that most games don’t allow for.

All told, Toy Fair was a lot of fun, as it should be with a name like Toy Fair.