Toy Fair opens with media day in Nuremberg

Feb 3, 2010, 12:46 GMT

Nuremberg, Germany - The Nuremberg Toy Fair began Wednesday in Germany with a media day previewing top novelties slated for the annual event, the world's top trade show for playthings and games.

Actresses dressed up as life-sized fairy dolls, kindergarten-age demonstrators showed off pedal cars and toy swords, and teenage athletes twirled a new Frisbee-style toy, the Yo-Be, for the press.

Carpenters were meanwhile completing booths and displays for the 2,600 exhibitors, who were to welcome trade visitors from Thursday until February 9. The fair's annual toy innovation awards were to be announced at the end of the day.

Chief organizer Ernst Kick said, 'We're expecting 75,000 visitors.'

The toy trade says it has come through the recession with only a slight softening in world sales. US sales were off just 0.8 per cent last year, but picked up strongly as 2009 closed. Overall German sales of toys and video games were also down by a similar margin.

The toy trade amounts to annual sales of 76 billion dollars worldwide, with an estimated 85 per cent of the products made in Chinese factories.

The Yo-Be, announced in January in the United States by ToyQuest, is one of the toys with the potential to trigger a craze this summer. It is a plastic flying saucer tethered by an elastic cord to the player's wrist.

Michael Wolf of the German distributor, Universal Cards, explained, 'Its name is a combination of yo-yo and Frisbee.' The player must keep the disc spinning while slinging it back and forth in the air. The manufacturer describes it as 'habit-forming.'

Wolf said US retailers had already pre-ordered 2.5 million of the toys for this spring, to retail at 13 dollars. Early orders in Germany, Europe's biggest market, were already running at 150,000.

In common with most toys at the fair, the Yo-Be designers had to carefully follow toy safety rules to avoid any chance of scandal. The disc has a soft plastic rim so that it does not bruise a child who gets in its way.