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Retro Toys Seeing Holiday Rebirth

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By MAE ANDERSON

The Associated Press

Published: December 1, 2008

NEW YORK - Counting dollars this holiday season, Tom De Santes wants to avoid buying high-priced techno gadgets as gifts for his two sons.

Instead, he is going to buy the boys, ages 6 and 7, a classic from his own childhood: Lincoln Logs.

"I loved them as a kid and used to build huge log cabins," remembers De Santes, 38, who lives outside Boston in Scituate, Mass., and is a marketing director for an education software company. With Lincoln Logs, "I like that my boys and I can create something together."

Without a "must-have" toy fad this holiday season, and with parents facing a deteriorating economy, tried-and-true toys are being embraced by parents and toy makers alike - what one analyst calls a "back to the toy box" approach.

"'Retro' or 'nostalgia' toys can be viewed as the 'comfort food' of the toy industry and I do think folks naturally gravitate to what made them happy when they were young, or what is familiar to them," said Anita Frazier, a toy analyst at NPD Group, a market research firm.

Ken Moe, general manager of Backtobasics toys.com, a Web site owned by Scholastic Corp. that offers classic toys such as Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots, the Slinky and Colorforms, said sales so far this season indicate a rising interest in old favorites.

Though most sales will occur over the next few weeks, Moe said Junior TinkerToys, Lincoln Logs and toy instruments have been among the big sellers in the past few months.

Lauren Horsley, who has 5- and 1-year old boys and a 3-year-old girl, plans to buy TinkerToys, a Cabbage Patch Kid doll and classic board games Sorry! and Hungry Hungry Hippos. The 29-year-old from Salt Lake City said she finds value in the toys' quality and universal appeal.

"We just bought our first house this fall, and with the economy so unstable we need to be as conservative as possible to ensure that we pay our bills," she said. "A lot of pricey, faddish toys aren't going to do our children much good if we don't keep a roof over their heads."

Classic toys could fill the gap left by a lack of a "must have" toy, as toy makers stick to past hits and avoid taking risks, what Needham & Co. analyst Sean McGowan calls going "back to the toy box."

"Partly, it's because they know 'this thing works,'" he says.

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