Remember when you were a kid, and your dad would say things like, "Eh, back in my day, all we had to play with was a dried chicken bone and a ball of navel lint and we were happy!"
and you'd say, "Yeah, pop, sounds great" and go right back to your
prized possession, the new electronic game you had to have because it
was the culmination of thousands of years of toy development? Well, as much as we'd like to think that ours is a unique generation, the toymakers still have kids' numbers, and they continue to push high tech - and high price - products out into the market.
The American International Toy Fair kicks off this Sunday in New York City.
The fair's motto, "Inspiring Growth", surely refers to the profit
margins of the companies that will be in attendance. Manufacturers will
be rolling out the latest in cutting edge toys, with advances in
electronics making it possible for 50 percent of toys sold in stores to
have "some sort of microchip in them" (you know, people laugh at me
when I take them to my fortified bunker, hidden somewhere in the Sierra
Nevada range, but when TMX Elmo and his legions of robot toys become
self-aware and rise up to slay their human masters and dominate the
world, well...).
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