Mattel And Hasbro 'Terrified' Kids Are Turning Toward High-Tech Toys

With more children now interested in high-tech Christmas gifts such as tablets and smartphones, toy manufacturers Mattel and Hasbro are terrified about the future profits for their companies, an equity research spokesperson said.  

Action figures, board games and Barbie dolls are slowing becoming less interesting for children as the market becomes more and more packed with electronics devices such as iPads, Kindles and other tablets. Mattel's top-selling product this year was not a traditional toy in any sense, but rather a plastic cellphone case.  

Analysts also lowered their forecasts for fourth-quarter toy sales, according to The Inquisitr. They currently estimated at $1.41 billion for Hasbro and $2.29 billion for Mattel, which were lowered after sales from the first three quarters of 2012 went down.

"The top two guys, Mattel and Hasbro, they are terrified. They should be terrified," said, Sean McGowan, managing director of equity research at Needham & Company, reported by the Financial Times on Tuesday.

The report noted that "the amount of time children are spending with technology devices has skyrocketed" because they can "watch free content online and play free video games for hours on end."

Mattel and Hasbro have not launched their own tablets to compete with ones already in the market such as Amazon's Kindle Fire. McGowan added that children as young as 3 years old received tablets such as the Kindle Fire, iPad and the likes of them this year for Christmas

"Clearly, young people have an aptitude for and expectation with digital platforms that we need to recognize," said John Frascotti, chief marketing officer for Hasbro.

Frascotti said Hasbro is making attempts to address the popularity with digital starting with the reinvention of the 1990s toy Furby, which now comes with a free mobile application used to "feed" the toy and translate its "Furbish" language into English, according to The Post Chronicle.