Disney Toys Going High Tech
Does this sound like you or anyone else you know?
Starting at infancy, parents can surround their kids with Winnie the Pooh bottle warmers and beehive-shape CD players. In a few years, the children graduate to Mickey Mouse portable DVD players and karaoke machines shaped like Cinderella’s carriage. Even traditional toys such as its Twinkle Lights Cinderella, licensed by Mattel Inc., have electronic sensors that cue lights when a wand is waved over them.
Walt Disney Consumer Products is making technology a key part of all their toys. They think that’s what kids want, Joe Lawandus, vice president of global toys for the Glendale-based subsidiary of Walt Disney Consumer Products, says that it’s the “cost of entry into the toy world”. Is that true?
Many of my friends and I (and we’re hardly the most granoli bunch out there) prefer toys without all the bells and whistles. While toys with flashing lights and annoying electronic music seem to be the standard here in Vietnam, my son usually tells the sales clerks to turn it off as soon as they start waving the noisemakers in his face.
I’m under no illusion that video games, iPods, and other electronic equipment will be a big part of our kids’ lives. But, I don’t think it’s necessary to make everything dependent on electrical power. And as Christine said, her kids were very pleased with an old manual typewriter they found at a secondhand sale. Maybe it was the novelty of having something that didn’t need batteries.
L.A. Daily News, August 16, 2005
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POSTED IN: Children's Toys
1 opinion for Disney Toys Going High Tech
Play Library » Nostalgia Toy #3: Weebles
Sep 14, 2006 at 2:47 pm
[…] Once again I’ll sound like an old fogie and say, “My, how these toys have changed since we were little!” My sibs and I had the Winnie-the-Pooh Weebles and a yellow and orange house, and they more resembled an egg than the Weebles that are out now. It’s the first thing I remember being moved into our new house when we came back to the States. As long as you have your favorite toy make the trip with you, what else do you need? […]
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