EG’s Animal Attraction

You were not alone if, when wandering by Endless Games’ booth at this year’s Toy Fair, something unusual caught your eye. There on a pedestal was a large plastic dinosaur playing shepherd to a flock of several dozen traditional plastic animal figurines. And if you stuck around for a second, you also saw just how many retailers quietly came by to grab a catalog for those Collect-A figurines, an assortment of more than 200 animals, both modern and prehistoric, that Endless is distributing in the U.S. for Hong Kong’s Procon.

“Even I was skeptical at first due to the fact there are other animal lines out there,” says Brian Turtle, national sales manager for the South Amboy, N.J.-based game company. “But all it took for me was Toy Fair in New York—to see how people reacted to the high quality of our figures—to become a believer.”

The main challenge since then, Turtle says, has been convincing the market that there’s room on the shelves for yet another menagerie of authentically detailed animal figures.

“I’ve seen some cases where a store will carry three or four different animal lines, so maybe it’s not always a 'take ours instead of theirs’ issue,” Turtle says. “In a perfect world, there’d be room for everyone. The consumer would have a broader selection to choose from, and manufacturers could co-exist. In any case, we’re a far cry from trying to squeeze any of our competitors out. We’re just trying to 'squeeze in’ where room and opportunity allow, and let the line speak for itself.

“We take a lot of pride in the quality and detail in our figures, and I think that’s what has given us the opportunity to play ball with some of the other figure lines. I really can’t take anything away from the competition; there are some great figures out there.”

The Collect-A line will grow in 2009 to include North American mammals, insects and more prehistoric creatures.