Whee!

Like a mammoth jack-in-the-box, the U.S. toy industry has bounced up high and merrily in its first full postwar year. Before this Christmas has come & gone, retailers expect to sell a record-shattering $250,000,000 worth of toys.

But still there may not be enough toys to go around. Toy production has not increased as fast as the sales volume (due in part to a 20% rise in prices since last year). Toymakers, like everyone else, have been plagued by shortages, and toys will have to be spread over 5,000,000 new users (born at a record rate during war).

But except for such items as bicycles, trains and erector sets which will still be short, U.S. moppets will have almost everything. Items: streamlined baby strollers; aluminum jeeps and station wagons; helicopters; stuffed spaniels that glow in the dark; toy sinks with running water; model kits to make prefabricated houses; dump trucks; and an electrical gun that throws pictures on the wall with each pull of the trigger. For the first time in six years, Germany will ship some $250,000 worth of music boxes, harmonicas, mohair deers, whiz-bang racing cars to the U.S.

Whistle Round the Bend. Makers of toy trains expect to satisfy only one-half of the tremendous demand. Model railroads have lighter (plastic) and longer trains, remote-control electronic systems that switch and disconnect cars, station masters that announce arrivals, electronically operated cranes, locomotives that whistle, chuff, and trail real smoke.

Lionel, biggest toy train maker, expects to sell more trains (about $10 million worth) than the whole industry sold in its best prewar year. For grownup buffs, Chicago's Varney Scale Models Inc. invested $50,000 in drawings and dies for a new locomotive model. It has already sold 1,000 kits of parts at $100 each.

Dolls, the toy trade's staple, will have their biggest year yet, with estimated sales of $40,000,000. Items: a new version of the famed Kewpie doll, now making a successful comeback with close to a million orders so far; a doll with the prewar plastic skin; a freer flowing version of the rubber Dydee doll, a wartime casualty.

Teeth Around the Ring. Like the auto industry, the toy industry in general figured that demand was strong enough to make new lines unnecessary. But there are some new toys. Samples: P: A wooden penguin which continually dunks its beak into a glass of water. (The secret: a reaction between the water and chemicals inside the bird.) P: The Skweez-Me Boxers, a couple of gangling woodenheads who fight and flop in their little wooden ring through manipulation of the base. P: A dart game in which plastic bombs are dropped when trigger releases in model planes are hit. P: A wind-up car that turns corners, reverses, and parks itself.

All of the 100,000 items offered this year will incorporate the best engineering, mathematical, and psychological talent that toymakers could muster. Nevertheless, many of the new toys will be a gamble. Reason: children often show complete lack of interest in what toymakers and psychologists think they will like. Example: a new teething toy was carefully designed so that 1) its lollypop colors were most attractive, 2) it could be gripped in five different places, 3) it was scientifically measured to fit a baby's hand. So far U.S. babies have shown that they can take it or leave it alone.

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