The Buzz
Staff -- Playthings, 12/1/2001
Two eBay surveys of consumers say holiday spending plans are unchanged given the economic climate. Surveys prior to and after Sept. 11 showed no change in consumers' intentions… Although 3DO's Cubix video game might appear to be targeted at the 12-and-under crowd, Senior Producer Robert Daly says the ability to customize the robots will stretch the market to older age groups. "Players like to be able to customize their characters so they can say, 'Mine is tweaked a little differently than yours.' "…Cartoon Pizza, the creators of Doug and PB&J Otter, will develop new projects with Sesame Workshop in a non-exclusive relationship…Families now have four new ways to find out who is The Weakest Link. Iterations of NBC's highly rated game show appear on PlayStation and PC thanks to Activision and as a board game and electronic game by Hasbro and Tiger, respectively…Electronic Arts studio Origin Systems has tapped Todd McFarlane to design more than 30 characters for Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. McFarlane will also develop six figures and two comic books based on the long-time PC series…Ohio Art recently unveiled the winning design for its "Totally Your Betty Spaghetty" contest. The company received approximately 15,000 entries, strong incentive to run it again soon…For industry data anytime, anywhere, research firm NPD has debuted NPDfunworld.com. Consumer and POS data is updated monthly and fully customizable by members…For more buzz visit playthings.com.
