Gaming in Toyland

I visited a toy store, and came away concerned for the state of traditional gaming hardware and software retail.

I went to Times Square’s gigantic three-story Toys R’ Us today, obviously because I was Christmas shopping for the young people in my life and not because I’m an adult child obsessed with toys. Like, don’t assume that I went to go in and look at the toys just because I like toys because that wasn’t it at all, like, I know a lot of children and OKAY FINE I WENT TO LOOK AT TOYS.

I was expecting to pick up and hug the roly-poly stuffed penguins while no-one was looking. I didn’t expect to get such a vivid look at the breadth of game IP, transmedia and the gamification of toys — all of which I think makes surprisingly ominous news for the traditional game retail landscape as we once knew it.

I also saw this adorable, sad-looking Mario standing at the crossroads of the world. Coincidence?! Read on, and see my extensive picture gallery from the weird world of entertainment retail!



Skylanders Giants is unsurprisingly prominently on display in most corners of the store, both alongside the action figures and in the video games section. But there were toys based on more mature properties: Check out these Halo mini-figs. You can’t tell from my crappy phone snap (forgive!), but these are definitely not things you want your kids putting in their mouths.

So Halo 4 is theoretically an M for mature game, right? So who’s the audience for these little toy battle packs? There’s also this playset based entirely on Reach’s team game. Do kids buy heaps of these and play teabag? Weird.
Halo isn’t the only M-rated gaming brand that gets a kids’ playset, either. Either the popularity of these titles well escapes their intended age, or gamers are taking a long time to grow up.
Also, guess what? Sonic was everywhere! Right next to Skylanders Giants, even. Check this out! Since when did Sonic have a car?! (I know, Sega All-Stars Racing, pipe down). But seriously. He’s the fastest thing alive. Why would he benefit from having a car? Today’s kids don’t even care.
They had a casino zone playset I’m going to pretend I don’t kind of want. You could also buy all kinds of Sonic and Tails stuffed dolls and figures, and a playset of Sonic and Amy. Take note that this probably has far more to do with the popularity of the latest Saturday morning cartoon show, Sonic X, and not the games.
So we found these things called Hex Bugs, which are apparently tiny vibrating creatures with rubbery tendrils that kids put on race tracks. Convince me all kinds of busy ladies aren’t stashing these in their purses. Anyway, it’s got a built-in collection ‘mechanic’ — the package back encourages you to seek out the rarest. Keep buying! It’s a game, like Pokemon!
Actually, I remember when cards like Pokemon were pretty much the only collector’s game in town where you were supposed to buy packages blind and hope you got something exciting and rare. Turns out there are racks and bins full of sealed-package items at Toys R’ Us, challenging you to take the gamble of buying a couple in the hopes of gathering what you want.
People seem to like that these days. I wonder if people would be into buying video games like that — knowing what the game’s gonna be, but not knowing who your hero will be or what skills they’ll have? Buying random character packs until you get something you like? This seems to be a way today’s young people like asking their parents to spend money.
Furby is back, and it’s been increasingly gamified, Tamagotchi-style. Its clean white packaging prominently advertises its ability to take on one of several different personality types based on how you treat it, and how it can learn things from you. Also secretly wanted one of these.
Video games receive advertising on the back of Barbie doll boxes now, albeit a little late.
Here’s an odd one. Back around the MySpace age, there was a popular online community among young girls who liked to share and dress digital paper dolls, called Stardoll. Stardoll seems now to have its own line of cross-branded Barbies, where if you buy one you get online credits to use in the Stardoll community.
In another collision of social media brands, virtual currency and real-toy licenses, you can also get ‘city cash’ for buying CityVille Monopoly. CityVille Monopoly. In a mixture of awe and disbelief, I said “fucking Zynga,” out loud in the toy store board game section. Sorry, parents.
Even toys for pre-schoolers are part-digital, all-gamified.
One gaming brand got a more visible store display than any other. With this massive tower and bins of toys, tees, hats, bags, action playsets and seriously whatever you can imagine, Angry Birds is apparently in control of children’s lives.
The crossover between Angry Birds and Star Wars is apparently a major thing, too. There was a game where you roll dice to throw toy birds at a Death Star made of blocks. And there were a lot of these.
The video game section is its own wing within Toys R’ Us’ basement. No one was in there except for a couple of grandmothers. Wii U is in plentiful supply. Sales staff appeared bored. And this shelf is all there is to the PSVita’s physical software lineup — despite the poor quality photo you can see someone has sympathetically spread all the copies of FIFA, Lumines Live and Touch My Katamari out across several different shelves to make things look less bleak.
I think when people say that mobile, social and online is chipping away at traditional retail marketshare, they don’t mean that there’s some binary choice people are making to play iPhone games instead of Nintendo games. It’s that those IP are so pervasive, so ready to cross-market, they proliferate easily within the consumer culture. Everything has an online component, a website, credits. Every toy is interactive, now. Every single intellectual property needs to exist across multiple media.
If you want to see a weird state of affairs as far as what constitutes “gaming” to today’s young people and the parents that will be holiday shopping for them, go to a big toy store. My god, I wouldn’t want to be launching a video game console into this age.