October 6, 1985
"Must-have Toys of the 1985 Christmas Season"
by Cynthia Smith,
New York Times Sunday
1. Axlon, AG Bear
2. Tomy, My Robot Buddy
3. Tandy, Intellivision3
4. Matchbox, Impossiball Soccer
5. Hasbro, Wuzzles
6. V-Tech, Dial A Teacher
7. Fisher Price/Kodak, Fisher Price Camera
8. Hasbro, My Little Pony Bouncing Pony
9. Coleco, Cabbage Patch Koosas
10. Buddy-L, Credit Card Bank
It was just two years ago when Coleco’s “Cabbage Patch” dolls turned parents into offensive linemen, battering and bruising their way through toy and department stores to bring home the latest and greatest toy for under the tree. Here at the Sunday magazine, we’re ready to help you get a head start on the season’s hottest toys – before you’re fighting for the last one on the shelves!
Hottest Toy of the Season: Axlon’s
AG Bear
Without a doubt, this year’s must-have toy is
AG Bear, a cuddly teddy bear equipped with a voicebox so that it can talk back to your child. The bear’s voice (what the manufacturers call “bear talk”) is a mixture of synthesized speech and cute growly noises; the overall effect is particularly adorable. And if you have two or more kids – or one very lucky child! – two AG Bears can talk to each other, mimicking each other’s sounds back and forth in a very convincing facsimile of conversation. Your child wants one; better go get it now. $49.99 [1]
Best Toy For Toddlers: Hasbro’s
“My Little Pony Bouncing Pony”
If your toddler has an older sister, chances are good that she’s already in love with Hasbro’s “My Little Pony” franchise. Now, Hasbro is reaching for the 2-and-younger demographic with the inflatable
Bouncing Pony. Weight limit 25 lbs. [2] $9.99
Best Plush Toys: Hasbro’s
Wuzzles and Coleco’s
Cabbage Patch Koosas.
Backed up by a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Disney,
Wuzzles are two animals fused into one, like “Bumbelion” (half-lion, half-bumblebee), “Butterbear” (half-bear, half-butterfly), and Eleroo (half-elephant, half-kangaroo). We’ve been told that the half-koala, half-parakeet “Koalakeet” is particularly hard to find, so snatch one up if you come across it! [3] $18.99
What Christmas season would be complete without another adorable, one-of-a-kind, gotta-have-it doll from Coleco? [4] This year, it’s
Cabbage Patch Koosas, cuddly animal companions of the original Cabbage Patch Kids.
Koosas come in three broad varieties: cats, dogs, and lions, but – like the original Cabbage Patch Kids – each one is slightly different. Koosas come with an ID tag, collar, and a registration certificate with the “Koosa Kennel Association.” [5] $24.99
Best Outdoor Toys: Fisher Price/Kodak,
Fisher Price Camera and Matchbox’s
Impossiball Soccer
A collaboration between venerable camera manufacturer Kodak and long-standing children’s toy manufacturer Fisher Price, the
Fisher Price Camera is a real working camera made for children. It has specially designed film-advance and shutter controls that are extra-large for use with small fingers. Level pictures are a snap thanks to the bright red indicator. It has soft, cushioned end caps, a "breakaway" neck strap, impact-resistant film door and built-in lens cover, and a flip flash. Uses standard 110 film. [6] $27.99.
It’s Rubik’s-Cube-meets-soccer-ball in this innovative twist on puzzle toys. At the heart of the
Impossiball Soccer is a hard plastic toy not unlike the Rubik’s Cube that allows a child to twist and rearrange the pattern on the outside of the ball. What really sets this toy apart, though, is the thick layer of padding surrounded by soft, colored outer panels made of synthetic leather. The result is that the entire Impossiball has the same weight and feel as a regulation soccer ball. Solve the puzzle, or score the goal? It’s up to you! [7] $19.99
Best Learning Toys: V-Tech’s
Dial-A-Teacher and Buddy-L’s
Credit Card Bank
Dial-A-Teacher is a talking toy that helps prepare children for early school years. Children “dial” up questions on an authentic-looking telephone, and punch in answers on the touch-pad keyboard. Before you know it, your kids will be learning the basics of spelling, math, music, and more. Questions are stored on various cards; the Dial-A-Teacher comes with five cards included, and more are available from V-Tech. [8] $39.99
Buddy-L has updated the long-standing children’s favorite cash register toy for the 1980s with their all-new
Credit Card Bank. Just insert the credit card into the slot, and a large LCD screen allows the child to perform calculator functions on the keypad. With the push of a button, those balances can be “deposited” or “withdrawn” from the credit card; pushing another button displays the balance. The cash drawer also opens and closes to permit the use of passé cash transactions. [9] $18.99
Best High-Tech Toy: Tomy’s
My Robot Buddy
Tomy makes a variety of great toy robots, and they’ve finally put it all together with
My Robot Buddy, a remote-controlled robot that you program with eight separate commands and then operate by voice from up to 100 feet away. With a single spoken command, My Robot Buddy can go forwards, backwards, raise and lower its arms, or “smile” (which flashes lights and makes a noise). By far the neatest feature, however, is the built-in microcassette recorder, which allows My Robot Buddy to play back messages that you’ve previously recorded. $54.95 [10]
Best Toy For the Kid Who Has Everything: Tandy’s
Intellivision 3
Although Atari has captured the imagination of many kids with its Nintendo videogame system, Tandy has struck back with an innovative new videogame system based around the 16-bit Motorola 68000 microprocessor (the same chip behind the powerful Apple Macintosh and Tandy 520 ST computers). With all of that advanced hardware, the
Intellivision 3 promises “true 3-D graphics,” distinguishing it from the side-scrolling games at the heart of the Atari Nintendo. The Intellivision 3 also has wireless joysticks, eliminating cumbersome cables and allowing you to play the game from up to 30 feet away. Oh, and while you’re waiting for those 3-D games, the Intellivision 3 plays all of your old Intellivision games – if you still have them. The only downside is the price -- $599.99. [11]
----------
NOTES:
[1] AG Bear’s success ITTL is brought to you by Atari, of all things. Here’s how it works. AG Bear is
pretty much as OTL, and the manufacturer, Axlon, is a company funded by former Atari founder Nolan Bushnell (through his
Catalyst Technologies venture capital firm). The reason you’ve (probably) never heard of AG Bear is that, IOTL,
the hot toy of 1985 was the very similar
Teddy Ruxpin, a cassette-powered talking teddy bear toy (that you have no doubt heard of). Teddy Ruxpin was developed by
Don Kingsborough, who founded the “Worlds of Wonder” toy company after leaving – you guessed it – Atari’s consumer products division in 1983. ITTL, Atari’s fortunes ride high in ’83, and Honeywell spins off the consumer products division in late ’84. Kingsborough remains as president of the new venture and (as OTL) gets into toymaking – he’s just a bit too late to get to market with Teddy Ruxpin in ’85. So, without Teddy Ruxpin, AG Bear becomes the hit toy of the ’85 holiday season.
Oh, and one more thing: IOTL,
the Nintendo NES was distributed by… Worlds of Wonder. Needless to say,
that deal never takes place ITTL because Worlds of Wonder doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter for the NES, obviously; Atari has plenty of clout to get the Atari Nintendo on distributors’ shelves.
[2] There was never a “My Little Pony”-branded bouncy pony in the 1980s, although you’d think there would have been, wouldn’t you?
[3] OTL’s Wuzzles, complete with the (very short-lived) cartoon.
[4] Hey, this is 1985, so it’s still largely called “the Christmas season” as opposed to the more-inclusive “holiday season” we know and love today.
[5] Unchanged from OTL.
[6] Completely unchanged from OTL. Camera technology has advanced a bit in the past 25 years, no?
[7] Thanks to
Clorox23 for pointing me to a catalog of Uwe Meffert toy prototypes; from there, I went to the real-life Impossiball (pictured above), which has the rather expected disadvantage of rolling off of shelves and stuff. So I thought: “why not make it an actual, playable ball?”
[8] OTL product and text; note that although the numbers are on a keypad, we’re still using “dial” to describe how one operates a telephone.
As OTL, V-Tech is slowly incorporating computer technology into children’s toys; that will obviously start taking a very different path ITTL. Also, IOTL, this toy is called "Dial A Teacher" (no dashes); chalk that up to butterflies.
[9] This toy is completely unchanged from OTL, but that picture is just so adorably ‘80s I had to include it.
He’s wearing a little suit and tie!
[10] This is a combination of various OTL Tomy robots, including the Verbot and the Chatbot, both of which had the ‘voice programmable commands’ gimmick. The major drawback was that every time you shut off the robot, you’d have to reprogram the commands. Here, Tomy uses
4K Atari FeRAM sticks so that the commands aren’t lost when the robot is shut off or the batteries are changed.
[11] This is the Intellivision III prototype finally brought to market by Jack Tramiel’s Tandy, and powered by the kludge-y 3-D system (“MAGIC”)
discussed way back in post #83. At what is essentially the NEO GEO price point, well, you can probably guess it’s fate.
