Transcripts

Marianne Szymanski:
The age of a toy is anywhere between 3-5 years,the age span of a toy, but the classic toys last a lot longer.

Marianne Szymanski, President of Toytips.com has focus groups of kids playing with and rating toys. And what does she think is a good choice this year?

I think Leapfrog has a wonderful line of educational learning toys. Doing research for 15 years I find it very rare that kids really love math toys. When Leapfrog introduced some of their line, their Turbo blaster for example. Kids in our focus groups went crazy,they had so much fun, learning math through these toys. So, when I see things like that, I get very excited because obviously when a toy is really fun and really educational that's the best combination you can find.

Marianne cautions against buying the "hot toy" just because it's the "hot toy".

I really encourage people to buy things that's appropriate for their children. The "it" toy or the "hot" toy "what everyone's talking about" ,if you're going to look for something like that, make sure it's really age appropriate-and make sure that your children really wants it. Personally I really like to look for classic toys because I personally find them fun to play with and remember myself. But, you have to be careful that when you're out shopping that you're not just buying things that everybody else wants.

You can link to Marianne's website from ours: somethingyoushouldknow.net-I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.