Bored With Her Toys

"You've got a lot more opportunity with a unisex product because you've got twice the marketplace to go after, twice the number of licenses," said Reyne Rice, toy trend specialist with the Toy Industry Association. "It opens up a lot of different doors."

Girls Get Scrapbooks

The $21 billion toy industry was shaken by a 4 percent drop in sales last year, and many executives are trying to think about the business in new ways. But it's tough to break out of old habits.

In recent years, kids have been spending less time with toys because of the Internet, electronics, television and even homework. In response, toymakers have delved deeper and gotten more creative to energize their base. In the process, they have created some of the best boy toys ever.

Spin Master Ltd. has produced dramatic remote-control vehicles -- a central business for boy toys -- including trucks that climb walls, little helicopters that hover perfectly and vehicles that can go from land to water to air with astonishing speed.

Meanwhile, K'Nex Industries Inc. and the Lego group have taken building systems to new heights, giving boys nifty new interlocking technologies to build not just planes and bridges but also characters and games they can then play with. Cool spy gear has unleashed the inner 007 in legions of boys. And the once-lowly water gun has become the must-have new accessory each summer, with ever more ways to splash, surprise, soak and scare your opponents.

But besides the wonderfully creative arts-and-crafts books from Klutz and perhaps the success of MGA Entertainment Inc.'s edgy Bratz fashion dolls, not much has ignited the toy business for girls. The most innovative products for girls have tended to come outside the realm of traditional toys: in accessories, room decor and scrapbooking.

Which raises a question: Are girls moving out of toys earlier because the toys aren't good enough? Or are the toys for girls less interesting because the girls have left the market?

"I personally think there could be a lot more innovation than there is," said consultant Zwiers. "A lot of what's happening is old hat."

Hitting 'Nurturing' Buttons

Even when a company tries to tackle girl products, it's hard to always get it right. Wild Planet unveiled a new line of room decor accessories called GLS, for "Girls Living in Style," two years ago, but the line has not done as well as the company hoped.

The subtlety of the business is almost maddening: In one case, Wild Planet packaged three GLS accessories -- a mini radio, mini lamp and mini fan -- and expected it to be wildly successful. It wasn't. Turns out girls don't want their accessories in a bundle; they want to buy them individually.

"It's always confounding when you think you have it," said Grossman of Wild Planet. But he cuts his team some slack by recognizing that Wild Planet began as a boy-toy company and is still trying to understand girls by spending more time on market research. Among his revelations: Even though girls may be moving up the toy spectrum at younger ages, they are not advancing emotionally at the same pace. So a girl toy that feels advanced still has to hit the emotional buttons appropriate to the age group, such as nurturing or making things pretty.

"With girls, you have to design in layers," Grossman said. This year, Wild Planet is tackling the somewhat easier preschool-girl market with a line of tiny dolls called Sugar Snaps, which have clothes that snap on and off in a jiffy, solving the vexing problem of the 3-year-old constantly going to her mother to ask for help getting Barbie dressed.