By: Eric Cohen

Every year the toy industry gathers for Toy Fair, a huge trade show in NYC where they all display their new toys for the year and those for the upcoming fall/holiday season. And every year (well, the last three), I’ve gone to Toy Fair to look for what’s hot and likely to be a “must have” this Fall. Here’s what I saw last month.

Alex Toys has some great new stuff. When I visit their booth the vibe is “It’s a craft! It’s a toy! It’s two in one!” which I love. Their new Silly Me Photo Booth set is awesome. It lets kids create photo props and masks that they can use to make silly-fun pictures of themselves. I don’t know about your kids, but mine can entertain themselves for hours with a camera, so this is sure to please. For Tweens, there’s the Duct Tape Messenger Bag Kid. Tweens can make their own bag from this, and you can supplement with extra tape from Duck Tape (shameless sponsor plug).

Wonderforge is a neat boutique-y company with some great family games. They showed me a new one called “Disney Eye Found It”, with a huge 6 foot long board where the goal is to find hidden pictures and clues. It’s a scavenger hunt in a neat package. They also had great game in the works called “Surprise Slides” featuring Sofia the First from Disney Jr. It’s still in “stealth mode” but be sure to look for it this Fall.

Zing makes “high-quality toys for high-action play”, that’s marketing speak for arrows and other stuff that shoots and flies. Their products are all soft foam, so no one’s getting hurt, and their mission (like ours) is to get kids off the couch. With all the buzz around the Hunger Games, their line of bows and foam arrows are sure to be a hit. I was able to take some practice shots with the Air Z Curve bow, it was pretty fun.

LEGO always introduces great new stuff at Toy Fair. I think they are on a path to world domination, between their toys, games, TV Shows, Youtube Channel, kidsfest, and LEGOLand, it won’t be long before the whole world is made of LEGO’s. The key to taking over the World might be their new Mindstorms EV3 “With LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 you can turn your LEGO creations into live robots that follow your every command.” Unless they rise up and enslave us all.  OK, I’m kidding, but your kids imagination may run wild with these ones.

For younger kids, LEGO has some new Jake and the Neverland Pirates sets, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sets (yes, they’re back), and much more.

Macaroni Kid fav (and sponsor) VTech is expanding their Switch and Go Dino line to include a Velociraptor. How they forgot to include this in the first generation is a mystery, but it’s on it’s way. For younger kids, the Switch and Go Dino’s are a good value with different play modes and features at a very affordable price.

Do you remember WowWee Toys? They made a huge splash about 10 years ago with RoboSapien and RoboRaptor. They’ve been quiet for the past few years, but they have two new toys that should be big hits this Holiday Season. The first is the Art See studio. It turns your iPad into an amazing painting toy.  Before you freak out, it has a feature that prevents little hands from hitting the menu button and deleting your downloads of Season two of Game of Thrones and the Twilight Series.  Their promo copy says, “ArtSee Studio's interface is designed for kids of all ages. By using a combination of tactile , easy to grip tools and an intuitive menu system, your child will find it easy to start creating new and exciting works of art instantly.” And that’s pretty much spot on. Little kids can play and create, as can bigger kids and adults.

But what was really cool from WowWee was the RoboMe (see top picture). This gizmo turns your iPhone into a robot. (without the threat of world domination).  It’s like someone said, “What if we put a face and personality app into an iPhone, stuck it on a mini Segway scooter and make it look more roboty.” Well, they did, and it works.  The app will also have a facetime/skype like feature so you can call in and chat as the robot with the user.

So if the machines don’t take over the World, those are some great new toys to get your kids either now, or this Holiday Season.