TECHNO TOYS: THE CHANGING FACE OF CHILD'S PLAY

Bounce Around Tigger

Sing Along Blue

Barbie CD-ROM

Remember entertaining yourself by using a stick, some string and a safety pin to pretend you were fishing?

Or thinking innertubes and cardboard boxes were loads of fun?

If so, then you may be one of those grown-ups who are bewildered by the world of high-tech toys.

Unlike days of old (as recent as 10 years ago), when a Barbie doll and a stuffed animal, a play workbench and a storybook all seemed like pretty cool gifts, the wish list of today's child is far more sophisticated.

Those e-mail letters to Santa are more likely to feature computer and video games than jump ropes and toy cars.

In short, today's child wants software.

Playskool Workbench and Barbie, long favorites of the preschool crowd, now have their own computer games.

Even cuddle toys like stuffed animals have tougher jobs. Arthur the stuffed Aardvark will interact with the television and his own computer game.

And Sing Along Blue, a blue, plush puppy, sings the theme song from his television show.

Bounce Around Tigger, based on the character in "Winnie the Pooh," will jump up and down with a push of its torso.

Analysts have discovered children today grow out of toys much younger than they did in the past, some moving on to high-tech toys by the end of kindergarten.

That means the toy industry has to hustle to adapt to children's changing desires. With the holidays nearing, some toymakers and retailers may find it tough to build excitement for most of the toys filling the stores.

Toy sales in the United States topped $22 billion last year but aren't expected to go much beyond that in 1998.

"We won't break any records this year," said Terri Bartlett, spokeswoman for Toy Manufacturers of America (TMA).

That's not to say that there aren't some hot toys this year. Furby is already in scarce supply, while Bounce Around Tigger and anything with ties to the Nickelodeon show "Blue's Clues" is selling well.

But these blockbuster hits can't mask the fundamental changes in the toy industry and may in fact reflect the changing nature of children's play.

Take this year's hottest toy, the Furby. The interactive, Gremlin-like plush animal speaks "Furbish" and can learn English.

They also talk to other Furbys, can give a "cold" to one another and teach each other tricks.

Marc Edwards, a manager at Cape Girardeau's Toys R Us, said the store hasn't been able to keep Furbys in stock because they sell so quickly.

Mattel, trying to put some luster back in its Barbie brand, is building its interactive business with a CD-ROM collection tied to the doll. Barbie Riding Club CD-ROM lets children have their own virtual horse to care for, while the Barbie Photo Designer Digital Camera and CD-ROM connects photos to the computer.

In just 18 months, sales in Mattel's interactive division have grown from $20 million to about $100 million.

"We are really at a turning point for the industry and children's play," said the TMA's Bartlett. "There is a new generation of children, and we have to catch up to them."

Even Lego stepped up its technology this year. Lego Mindstorms allows children to design and control their own robots, using a microchip that can be programed through a personal computer.

Edwards said the trend toward hand-held electronic games continues.

Battery operated electronic games like Mr. Potato Head and Candyland are popular, he said.

But he noted that unlike the board games of old, the nature of most computer and hand-held games requires children to play alone.

And classic board games are also being reintroduced through that genre.

Also, Hasbro, which produces many board games, has built a successful interactive division that took games like Clue, Scrabble and Life and put them on CD-ROM.

In addition, "We see a lot of what we call 'Edu-tainment' games," Edwards said.

Another burgeoning field is video games.

Analysts predict that sales of video games, which rose 55 percent last year, will rise an additional 45 percent this year. Sales of computer games will go up by as much as 15 percent in 1998.

John Sutton, a sales associate at Babbages Software in West Park Mall, said video game sales are always good, but "Zelda, Ocarina of Time" is selling like nothing else.

Available for the Nintendo 64 game system, the much-awaited video game is the fifth title in the best-selling Zelda series.

Nearly 200 copies of the game were reserved ahead of time by anxious gamers, Sutton said.

"We've only had about 10 extra to sell off the shelf," Sutton said.

The store expects the next shipment to sell equally well.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.