"That should raise red flags," said Julie Dobrow, director of the communications and media studies program at Tufts University, who fears what she calls "homogenization of consumer culture for kids."
Dina Antonoff, who is eyeing the V.Smile TV Learning System for her 2-year-old son this year, isn't worried about that. When she tested the toy out in the Rockville Toys R Us, she liked what she found -- a toy that combines popular shows with lessons categorized by the age of the player, such as size comparison, letter sequencing and telling time.
With InteracTV by Fisher-Price, kids answer questions from characters like Dora the Explorer.
(Richard Drew -- AP)
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She says the product will give her son a leg up, not just from the subject matter covered, but by increasing his hand-eye coordination, the kind of skill she thinks he'll need to become computer-literate in elementary school. "We live in a technological world," said the 35-year-old Olney resident. "Kids have to understand this stuff."
It's unclear, however, if parents will understand all of these toys. The SpongeBob and Nickelodeon trivia games, for example, require a child's mastery of cartoon minutiae, which could make it hard for the whole family to play, said Szymanski of Toy Tips.
Toymakers and parents have been down this road before. In fact, as surprising as it may seem, interactive TV toys have existed, in one form or another, for more than five decades.
In 1953 CBS launched a children's show called "Winky Dink and You," featuring the adventures of Winky Dink, an elflike cartoon character. An important part of the "Winky Dink" experience was a "magic screen," a sheet of clear plastic that could cling to the TV screen. As Winky Dink's adventures unfolded, lines and symbols would appear, to be traced onto the screen. When the announcer would ask kids to rescue Wink from trouble, the final section of the drawing would appear, giving Wink a bridge or ladder with which to save himself.
In 1987, kids met the Captain Power set of toys tied to the show "Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future." Children could aim a weapon at the screen and fire, with the toy keeping score of targets hit. Soon there was TV Teddy, a fluffy bear that interacted with special videocassettes.
But Captain Power and TV Teddy experienced short-lived successes. When the shows on which they were based ended, "the toys became boring," said Gary Cross, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University and author of "Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood."
Nevertheless, Mattel is still betting big on the concept, predicting kids will drag the Batwave Batmobile and Barbie Serafina doll into the living room when they watch TV. The toys offer running commentary on plot, plus occasional, albeit limited, motion.
Serafina is packaged with the Barbie "Princess and the Pauper" DVD, the movie at the center of an entire line of new Barbie products. Play the movie, place the cat within about 15 feet of the television screen and the interaction begins.
