I'll definitely agree, that is a very smart plan. Its also about adding value to the product itself for the consumer, which as you know is something I am very much an advocate of. While I can hear the stampede of people moving toward that side of the boat already, I am hoping that more manufacturers and publishers look on this as a source of inspiration for other new models rather than something to directly emulate.

What a great idea!!! I actually met this company at Toy Fair and they are on top of their products. I purchased a starter pack and we are excited to get TRacksters. They appear to have a leg up on all the competition because they are in technology.

We have been carrying this product for a few months and it sells great. Its still number 2 behind webkinz, but its catching up.

Brilliant business model. Thanks very much for sharing Richard.

I too love it; what a great way to move product.

First off... how could you not notice tracksters at toy fair??? those damn tracksters girls were everywhere except the Men's room! While the business model is intriguing... what looks good on paper seldomly plays out at retail (especially in the Toy industry). Besides... kids and parents are burnt out with the whole concept of web based play related to a toy. Game Boys, X-Box, Wii, parents are tired of kids spacing out in front of the TV or computer monitor. Yes... Webkinz sold great while they were hot but look NOW... stores are sitting on HUNDREDS of pieces of dead Webkinz inventory reprenting tens of thousands of dollars. Like Trolls or Beanie Babies or Webkinz should tracksters go WHITE HOT (trust me they won't)they will be consumed by the usual toy industry fiery ball of chaos, confusion and GREED! Like Webkinz the only long-term value in Tracksters is in the dumpster!

First off... how could you not notice tracksters at toy fair??? those damn tracksters girls were everywhere except the Men's room! While the business model is intriguing... what looks good on paper seldomly plays out at retail (especially in the Toy industry). Besides... kids and parents are burnt out with the whole concept of web based play related to a toy. Game Boys, X-Box, Wii, parents are tired of kids spacing out in front of the TV or computer monitor. Yes... Webkinz sold great while they were hot but look NOW... stores are sitting on HUNDREDS of pieces of dead Webkinz inventory reprenting tens of thousands of dollars. Like Trolls or Beanie Babies or Webkinz should tracksters go WHITE HOT (trust me they won't)they will be consumed by the usual toy industry fiery ball of chaos, confusion and GREED! Like Webkinz the only long-term value in Tracksters is in the dumpster!

head computer/techie" at 10Vox. You would have never known as he did not mention it and spent 20 minutes going over how the game worked, showing me how to play, ACTUALLY GIVING ME THE COURAGE TO PLAY, and thanked us for coming by the booth and said to please contact him if we ever had questions.

I can't speak for the rest of 10Vox but this was the only time all show that a manufacturer thanked me for coming to their booth...and this was the hottest toy at the show! If everyone else in 10Vox is like this young man, I'm happy to have their products and wish them the best!

Hope for the best for 10Vox and all retailers carrying their product! I'll let others sit anonymously behind computer screens and try and tear down others and not be positive.

C;

Let me try this again...my message was cut off I'm not very computer savvy.

Wow Zingster...the jealously(?) and ludicrous statements you have made make me wonder if:

1) You are actually a store owner
or
2) You were denied Tracksters for some reason.
or
3) You are a competing manufacturer who knows 10Vox has come out of no where with a great product and is jealous.

I don't know about you, but when a Hot Toy strikes, I am HAPPY! We saw it with Beanies and Webkinz and now we believe it is going to happen with Tracksters and have several re-orders for the remainder of the year.

You sound as if you sit on the sidelines waiting for a toy to get hot and jump in too late. If you are smart, you will stop carrying too much inventory before the demand dies.

I hope Tracksters makes a billion dollars because I know my store and many others will profit!

And if we only sell through 2 or 3 displays, you know what? That is still better than 99% of the toys on the market right now in this economy.

I was also at Toy Fair and I will say this as well...10Vox has some very pleasant people to deal with. Surprisingly, even their technical people are very polite and can answer difficult questions in an easy to understand way.

I spoke to a very tall and very nice young man who I was later told by my Sales Rep is the "head computer/techie" at 10Vox. You would have never known as he did not mention it and spent 20 minutes going over how the game worked, showing me how to play, ACTUALLY GIVING ME THE COURAGE TO PLAY, and thanked us for coming by the booth and said to please contact him if we ever had questions.

I can't speak for the rest of 10Vox but this was the only time all show that a manufacturer thanked me for coming to their booth...and this was the hottest toy at the show! If everyone else in 10Vox is like this young man, I'm happy to have their products and wish them the best!

Hope for the best for 10Vox and all retailers carrying their product! I'll let others sit anonymously behind computer screens and try and tear down others and not be positive.

C

Thank god for Tracksters!!!! It is actually helping pay our rent this month. I have not seen our business so slow in years, if not for Tracksters we would have lost money this month. We have sold 117 pieces in 40 days!!! GREAT JOB 10VOX - Its about time the specialty market got a "

Who keeps giving this guy money? Isn't this the failure of Florida's Toyopia Alex Reece? I am guessing the positive comments are plants by the company. The same thing they did with the already failed Kookeys. Calling retailers and acting like a parent. Why does Playthings keep giving this moron press? Are they paying you?

All I can say is call the stores listed on the Kookeys site, and ask them if they are carrying Tracksters, most of them won't after being burned for thousands of dollars with the Kookeys garbage now the company wants to milk the retailers for a couple of thousand more dollars to get started in Tracksters, well they won't steal it from me and from what I have experienced from calling the Kookey dealers they are not getting it from most of them either!

All I know is Tracksters is selling and selling like crazy, thank you 10VOX for the commercial campaign. In the 21 years I have been in business I have never sold a product advertised on TV, WOW! What a difference it makes!! Every manufacture should use TV.

Could someone tell me how to get to the log in screen?

wonce you sine up on tracksters.com there will be a email sent to your parents with your avatare name as login and password and a downloade link

We have sold completely out of Tracksters. Problem is we cannot get more. 10VOX should have prepared better for this. Having a great selling product is great, but not so great when you cannot get it. They tell me Series 2 will not be in until August. Not good.

It is pathetic. They are even putting plants here to post. What a joke. If they were that popular of a toy their website would be ranked much higher than it is. As it is their site tracksters.com gets very little traffic. Fact is they don't sell because if they did their website traffic would show this. Stop planting posts. Low rolling. Now they are going to try a pathetic puzzle idea. Some idiot is still throwing money to them even though everything Reece has done has failed. What happened to his real estate he did after the failed Toyopia? It too failed.

Time to debunk the slander of the anonymous poster.

Tracksters.com is a very popular site. Currently it is in the top 270,000 sites IN THE WORLD....out of more than 8 BILLION websites. If you look at alexa.com and type in tracksters.com it shows the huge amount of users and growth of the site.

Next issue is that you are personally attacking one owner in the company 10Vox. There are several partners who own the company and if you have such a problem with Alex Reece, maybe you should take that up with him personally instead of slandering him anonymously on the Internet.

So he had a failed Toy store 10 years ago? Wow...big deal. Businesses fail every day. Looks like he dealt with it like a man and has continued to grow and create. Also what is this real estate nonsense you are bringing up? What does that have to do with a toy company at all?

Seriously...you need to take your personal issues elsewhere.

Okay, not sure who anyone but Gregs Toys. Who are you Ben? Who do you work for? There was no slander at all. Just facts! They are ranked 291,000, which is not much at all for a website with high sales. Their traffic is also going down and not up, which is not what a growing compnay that sells a lot does. The last 7 days they are ranked over 1 million!! It appears their rank was from their web designer when they were working on the site. So Ben you toio may be a plant, as you have no clue! Look at the facts! Ranked over 1 million in the last week. 291,000 is not a high rank for a site with high sales. This coimpany calls toy stores and acts like customers. Where is the slander??? The truth.

Not one person that claims they have had many sales uses their store name in their post? Why is that? Plants from the company? If someone truly has high sales they would do like Greg Toys did and put their name in the post.

I went and searched what stores carried these near me and went to 3 of them. Each store was trying to unload them and will not re-buy. The highest price was $10.99 and the lowest was $7 (a loss) Retail about $14.99. The company has already proven to be a failure and their unethical marketing can only get these in the stores once. Re-buys will not happen.

Richard,
What about all this brou-haha? Yes or no on the reality of Trackster's success?
Valerie

I purchased these for my shop from NY Toy Fair. They shipped them to me in early May albeit without the display which is necessary to have any chance of selling them. I spent 8 weeks explaining to people who would comment about spending $15.99 on a matchbox car that they were not matchbox cars but an online racing game. Finally after 6 weeks I called 10vox and told them I'd like to send them back since without the display I'd sold about 5 of them...all of a sudden they send me a display except this time without the LCD player. Called them again, they overnight a player but guess what...it was defective, finally the following week I get the player and everything is up and running.....and we've been blowing them out at the rate of about 3 a week...Anyone interested can buy them from me at cost.....I'm just going to unload them.....call me at The Island Shop 906-847-3869 if interested.

There we have it. Someone actually leaving a real name of a toy store. The 2 comments from stores with their names should be enough proof. I bet most of the other comments are plants by the company.

This comapany is done. They used unethical marketing to get their items in stores and will not get any rebuys. I have closed this case. Guilty on all counts of being run by an bumbling idiot with dumb ideas that were years too late. They actually got Richard to post a blog about them. Stick a fork in 10Vox they are done.

Can't wait for their puzzle idea if it ever happens. Puzzles are already online. Why would someone buy one and use a code to go online?

Dear Valerie,

Thank you for your comment in which you wrote: "What about all this brou-haha? Yes or no on the reality of Trackster's success?"

My answer is that I really don't know. And for me it is entirely beside the point of my blog. I went to Nuremberg looking for companies that were pursuing innovative business models , not innovative products. I wanted to see concepts that pointed the way to how we will do business in the future. Whether their products are selling or not, 10Vox's use of the Internet to balance in store inventories without having to resort to markdown money is paradigm shattering for an industry that spends way too much money fixing overstocks.

Just trying to find info on this company. We purchased a Trackster for our son while on vacation. Hard sell from the young man at the lake store pushing them due to the high price of $17.99; which I know see we were overpriced. I can't seem to verify the publisher of the software so I won't even down load the game.
Any way I can verify the legitimacy & that the product we have is original & good? Guess I'll be checking my anti-virus software as well.
Our 7 yr. old was & is so excited about this & he can't even play with it yet.
Better be worth the price. Just more reason why we don't let the kids do online gaming.

Not a store owner, just a mom, who just registered my son's Trackster and is now looking for reviews. This was the email I just got: "Your child has registered to join TRACKSTERS Online racing! This registration allows your child to participate in the open beta of the TRACKSTERS world...As a beta tester, he/she will be rewarded from time to time by reporting bugs..."

So we spent 15 bucks for US to test for THEM? WTF?

My son also believed that "Tracksters could be described as Webkinz with racing cars". BUT IT IS NOT.

Advertisements make no mention of the fact that software has to be DOWNLOADED, and not played online like Webkinz. Neither does the packaging. Unfortunately it wasn't until after we opened it and registered did we find that out. So I just now went to Amazon to read reviews, and LO! it's crashing computers, and most say to stay away.

I will not be downloading the software and my poor son just wasted 15 dollars.

They might "fly off the shelves" the first go around, but you will find yourselves with ANNOYED customers. Is that worth it?

I am waiting on the blog about unethical marketing. 10Vox fits that mold. Looks like they might be going under. Their main site 10vox.com has been under contruction for some time.

I bought tracksters fro my son. I was not told it is actually a BETA version still has loads of bugs. The game was very unstable and crashed all the time. When it wasn't crashing, it was impossible to shut down. It has damaged the taks manager on my comuter. I have removed it but the damage is done. Great if these guys come up with a regat marketing idea, but they need to develop the actual product properly before they go inflicting it upon an unsuspecting public.
I would recommed that you don't go near this product.

I have all the above complaints as well. Bought the car and didn't know it was still just a beta version. Boy was I miffed at that! But what's worse, it hasn't even worked for us. Took two DAYS for someone to respond on the email(guess we're lucky they responded at all) and we still haven't been able to use the game. Now after seeing this, I guess I'll just ask for my money back directly from Tracksters.
Warning to others, don't buy Tracksters.

Maybe now we can get a blog post about unethical marketing and how it hurts the toy business!

This idea was NOT new and innovative. It was already being done by Webkinz and many businesses outside of the toy industry to control inventory, etc...

10Vox has set the toy business back years (maybe not years because most did not even know they existed). The unethical marketing makes people not trust people in the toy industry (toy buyers and customers).

I know I stopped trusting this blog and the woman promoting businesses she is affiliated with in another blog. And that is a good thing?

People were planted to post positive comments here and I seriously question the reasons behind the original blog post, as this was NOT new and innovative. Just what the toy industry needed after a tough 2008.

Tracksters site popularity is now way down to 1 million plus. Nobody goes there anymore. Can't wait to hear how innovative puzzles online are.

My season is almost over and I put this piece of junk 50%off back in July.....even at cost nobody wants them......I'm hoping 10voxx is at the NY Toy Fair this coming year......I'll let everyone within earshot know what a disaster it is...they will have to throw me out!!

Hmm,I was going to invest a lot in this product.All this is confusing.Any place where I can get some figures on the product?