Inside Out

A new online toy store is targeting African-American, Asian, Biracial and Latino consumers. At Dollslikeme.com, Summit, N.J. parents can find dolls and puppets that resemble their ethnic background. The store also features books, furniture, apparel, stationery and other toy products from companies like Gund, Brio, Fanny's Playhouse, Small World Toys, Russ Berrie and Melissa & Doug. A special discount program is offered to schools and non-profit organizations...4Kids Entertainment, New York, has signed a deal with the Nickelodeon network to broadcast the new YU-GI-OH! GX animated series in the UK, Spain, Australia and Latin America…Brio Toy will use flip books, or Flippies, Mount Kisco, N.Y., to demonstrate unique features of its Smart Track products in the Brio Wooden Railway System. Originally invented in 1882, flip books create the optical illusion of motion when images are flipped. Companies interested in creating their own custom flip books can visit Flippies at www.flippies.com...DIC Entertainment, Burbank, Calif., and the McDonald's Corporation, Oak Brook, Ill., have named Cornerstone Group's China Retail Management subsidiary the master licensee for McDonald's McKids line across Asia, excluding Japan and India. DIC is currently developing new products for the McKids brand and a line of vintage McDonald's apparel to launch in 2006…Video games can make you smarter? That's what games developer and publisher PopCap Games, Seattle, and The Games for Health Project, Portland, Maine, want to find out. Over the next several months, both are researching the impact video games have on one's cognitive health. A summary of the research will be available to the public beginning this spring.

Think Lego. Think everything but the bricks. An auction of antique playthings from the 19th and 20th centuries, maintained by founders of the Lego Group, were awarded to Theriault's, U.S. auctioneer of antique dolls and toys. The first significant doll and toy museum collection from Europe to be offered in the U.S. through an American auction house, the dolls and toys will be presented and sold during a three day event in Las Vegas from May 19-21. For decades the Christiansen (Lego) family of Denmark quietly maintained one of the world's largest museums of antique dolls and toys. For almost 40 years the collection was on display in a museum within Legoland Park in Billund, Denmark, home of the Lego Group. However, in 2005 the Lego Foundation decided to close the Lego Collections and to offer the museum's holdings to collectors by auction. While the toy collection will be auctioned, it will be preserved for posterity in book form. The collection's 3,000 commercial toys produced in Europe in the late 18th century through the 1920s will be documented in a two-volume commemorative boxed set. The Lego Foundation's antique doll and toy collection was considered to be the finest in Europe. A separate museum, which is not being sold and will be maintained in Billund, houses Lego objects from the early years when the firm was a small cottage industry under Lego founder Ole Kirk Christiansen. Theriault president Stuart Holbrook is looking forward to a strong reception from the U.S. and global toy collecting community during the auction. “Much like childhood is an experience that knows no borders, the collecting of rare and valuable dolls and toys is a truly international concern with the U.S. being at the forefront of the global phenomenon.”