Pretend Play

There is a full kitchen with an oven, a sink, food (a medley of fruits and vegetables) and even a “china” set for afternoon tea. The locale: the inside of Silly Goose Toys, an Essex, Mass., toy store where role play items are a central part of sales.

In fact, role play is a major part of sales for specialty and mass retailers alike—and the products go well beyond traditional dress-up. There are puppet theaters and stages, wooden play food, tin tea sets, buildable bake shops and, yes, role play mainstays like costumes for little knights, princesses, pirates and fledgling faeries.

At Silly Goose, children have a place to pretend and a chance to bring home products that will let them play different characters with family and friends. This is what owner Diane Robinson says is the main appeal of role play items. “My focus is to keep the classics, to use the imagination, to make you think, rather than play with something that's battery-controlled,” she tells Playthings. “We have a large kitchen section, hanging plants, Haba fruits, everything you need for a kitchen. You have everything you need to play with and be that character.”

Play areas in the 1,200-square-foot store let kids test out pretending, with plenty of choices so they can mix and match different products to create their own make-believe environments and characters.

In the dress-up category, Robinson says she prefers Aeromax costumes like the police and fire fighter outfits for boys, and has custom-made displays that are more free-standing for these types of items. The Lake Barrington, Ill.-based Aeromax offers role play products for ages 18 months and older. New this year in the Junior line are astronaut (white suit), cowgirl, nurse, SWAT team, biker, airline pilot, physician (offered with green or blue “scrubs”) and mail courier sets with sizes for ages 18 months to 12 years.

Some other popular items in this category at Robinson's toy store include a wooden sword and shield and a tin tea set that includes a serving tray, tea pot and four plates, cups and saucers, both from Schylling, Rowley, Mass. For tea time, a Teeny Tiny Tea Set is also available at Silly Goose from Creativity for Kids, Cleveland, and, for doctor wannabes, a Doctor's Case with cell phone from Theo Klein, Grantsville, Md.

Most role play items at Silly Goose are unlicensed, except for some Thomas the Tank Engine and Curious George items, according to Robinson. But product is more licensed property-based for costume company Disguise, Los Angeles, which will launch Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers costumes for ages 4 to 8 this fall and next year. Next spring will see the Dooblebops, Cars, Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder and several other major brand role play items as well as a Disguise original, Shadow Ninjas, which will be available at two price points, a “deluxe” box set and a “quality” box set. Come next fall, Disguise will even have more role play product for the preschool aisles.

Disguise's senior marketing manager, Deborah Zahm, tells Playthings that the plan this year is to make their product “a nice complement” to role play accessories, kits and other items currently on the market from other manufacturers.

For example, potential thespians in Disguise duds can play knight and princess in Alex's Playhouse Theatre (for ages 3 and older), which features colorful panels with windows, a door and a curtain in back. Show times can even be announced by a moving clock. An In My Kitchen set, complete with sink and pot/pan hooks, and a 36-piece Work Bench with screwdrivers, wrenches and a carpenter's square are also available from the Northvale, N.J.-based manufacturer.

Parents want to make sure kids are more active these days—and role play toys are perfect for encouraging this kind of play, according to Zahm. And dressing as a faerie, pirate or knight and acting it out is just one example of the possibilities of role play.

“There's a lot of media and research today that states to parents that kids need to get up and moving again and return to basics in terms of child development,” Zahm says. “Parents are already keying into the necessity for kids to get up and go out and play, and I think [role play] helps with the physicality of it. And number two, there's the imagination. If they're sitting in front of a show on television, as a child, it does not enlist your own imagination. Whereas with role play, it's becoming creative, it's about becoming imaginative and it really helps them develop cognitively.”

Disguise's vice president of marketing and design, Tor Sirset adds, “What we are creating is a product line that allows the kid the experience of becoming their favorite character and the opportunity to use their imaginations again.”

To dress the part this year, Melville, N.Y.-based costumer Rubie's will launch more than 800 new items throughout the year for all ages, including Curious George preschool and newborn outfits based on this fall's animated series on PBS and designs from Superman Returns, Zorro, '80s TV series Knight Rider, Dreamworks' upcoming Over the Hedge, Fox animated series Magical Do Re Mi, Cartoon Networks' Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, Holly Hobbie and Napoleon Dynamite. In addition to licensed dress-up, Rubie's will be offering some generic, unlicensed product for girls and boys like their Brotherhood of the Dragon line, ninja costumes featuring daggers and utility belts. Special displays will be available at retail for this assortment. The Superman Returns line seems to be a hot one for Rubie's, with costumes currently available for children to adults with an expanded line expected in the fall and additional boxed sets to be released during fourth quarter.

Just north of Silly Goose Toys is a little toy store in the small town of Yarmouth, Maine, called Island Treasure Toys. Owners Anita and Jim Demetropoulos try to stay away from licensed role play items because they feel they don't let kids use their imaginations to come up with their own kinds of characters and play scenarios. However, Anita says, for parents looking for more mainstream character items, there are other toy stores in the neighborhood that offer these products.

For open-ended role play picks, She is a fan of Forestville, Calif.-based Sarah's Silks. The company offers children different silk products that they can twist and turn to make into bandanas, skirts, tops, capes and other original hero or villain attire. Actual sewn silk capes, skirts and other outfits are also available.

Sarah Lee, co-owner of Sarah's Silks, tells Playthings that the company has several new items coming out this year, including silk pants for boys and girls in pink, turquoise, lime-green and purple as well as new, reversible crowns in gold and green for boys and veils for girls. Reversible capes in pink, lavender, red and orange will also be available. Products range in price from $8 to $30 retail.

The silks' simplicity add to the play value, according to Lee, because they can be turned into anything. “They [kids] make everything—pirate costumes, tie-on headbands, capes and more,” she says. “Parents will sometimes look at them and say 'Oh, it's just a scarf,' but with the kids, there's magic in what they can do with them. From little kids, 1- or 2-year-olds playing peek-a-boo, to 10-, 11- and 12-year-old girls using them, it's very open-ended play.”

Island Treasure Toys, which first started as an online business five years ago, is now a 1,000- to 1,200-square-foot store in addition to its continued online retail presence. Wooden furniture sets like Julianna's Kitchen from Waldorf Toys, Bergen, N.H., (which is set up in Demetropoulos's store along with ironing boards and Haba fruits and vegetables) and furniture sets and accessories from Elves and Angels, Wytopitlock, Maine, also fill the store's role play section.

“The toys that we offer are wholesome and encourage kids of all ages to use their imagination,” she says. “If you offer children toys of natural materials, I find—and many customers also find—that they play with them much differently. Our toys are all classic, wholesome and last forever. It's up to the child to use their imagination. If they want the silk square to be a car, it will be a car. If they want their wooden truck to be a doll carriage, it will be a doll carriage. It's amazing what kids can do with toys.”

Outside of unlicensed character product, there will always be Star Wars' Darth Vader, DC Comics' Batman or Disney's Tinker Bell. In terms of licensed role play, Joe Lawandus of Cranium, Seattle, says that the Disney Princesses were the top selling role play items when he worked for Disney a few years ago. Now “Viceroy of Toys” for Cranium, Lawandus is overseeing the launch of the Seattle-based game company's first toy line this fall.

Long a purveyor of family- and friend-themed social games, Cranium is entering the toy category through role play and activity sets. This fall, Cranium will release Giggle Gear (a dress-up line for ages 3 and older), which features a Mega Mask, Giggle Goggles, a Crazy Cap and other toys to help enhance role play, some with voice changing features. A Giggle Gear Super Fort, which lets kids create cool play spaces like a castle or a spaceship, is also part of the line along with plush and wearable accessories like the Magical Unicorn, Fancy Fairy and Roaring Dinosaur, all of which have sound effects.

“Toys are a natural evolution of our business and will be a major target along with games, publishing and our new media business,” says Lawandus. “So it's a major initiative as we move above and beyond being just a games company. The unique thing we're trying to do with the toys is give consumers a chance to shine in the traditional toy aisle in fun, engaging ways.”

In the specialty market, actual game pieces and cards will be provided so kids can act out the different roles in-store. In mass, product will be more packaging-driven with try-me voice morphers.

Lawandus adds, “It's really an alternative to everything else out there. It's a different sort of play pattern than traditional role play. It takes role play above and beyond just being about dress up and Halloween and brings along interesting play patterns—creative play in a very unique way to role play.”

After discussing particular store needs with retailers, Brooklyn-based M.O.G. Kids provides posters and point-of-sale displays

to assist retailers, as well as sample sets of their Pretendables line of dress up product for kids. The New York-based manufacturer has several different sets in its Make Believe, Public Service, Safety, Sports, Professional and Explorer series.

Each role play set features a book and CD-ROM that tells the story of its particular character, with added apparel and accessories included for pretend play.

New this holiday season is the Pretendables Princess play set, with a background story of a pair of princesses that gather their princess friends to attend the international royal ball. Additional new kits include fairy, singer, soccer, football, doctor and lawyer themes, which will be released in summer 2007.

Steven Fink, M.O.G.'s president, says when it comes to licensed product and role-play toys, it all depends on the trends at the moment—one minute it's Pirates of the Caribbean, the next it's Batman—an ubiquitous state of affairs in the entire industry.

“We will try to introduce some licensed lines and also keep a fresh line-up of the new, educational and fun titles,” he tells Playthings. “Child development experts agree that dress-up play not only stimulates imagination, it can also be tracked to improved vocabulary and social skills. Research shows that children who engage in this type of imaginative, open-ended play are more creative thinkers who will mature into better problem solvers.”

Role play items continue to be a mainstay at specialty retailers like Silly Goose overall, because of the extended play value they provide. Robinson says, “In a world where everything is moving fast, parents want to keep things simple before the influence of TV and commercials and more comes into the picture.”