RETAIL TRADE: Challenge for Parents

U.S. parents who are driven to ten-to-one martinis by the intricacies of their children’s electric trains or erector sets are in for a new shock this year. Thanks to a boost from Sputnik and Muttnik, 1957 is the year of the “scientific” toy. As the buying season opened this week, retailers displayed an array of ingenious, intricate and fiendishly clever inventions. Mothers and fathers will have to grapple with the mysteries of boats, guns, radios and dolls operated by batteries, transistors, motors, sonar waves, even the rays of the sun. When the inevitable time comes for repairs, they will find that many of the toys have sealed-in power units as inaccessible—and almost as involved—as the innards of a B-52.

An example of the challenge facing parents is Tigrett Industries’ fast-selling Golden Sonic ($20), a 20-in. long spaceship that will stop, start or change direction at the command of a whistle; so intricate is its mechanism, which is activated by a sound-sensitive diaphragm, that it comes with eight pages of instructions. Fairchild’s transistor radio kit ($8.95), which operates on power drawn from sunlight or artificial light, supposedly can be assembled by a nine-year-old, but it includes a booklet of diagramed directions that many a parent will be hard-pressed to decipher. Other toyland marvels include an electronic robot ($8.95) that picks up pieces of metal by remote control and drops them onto a motor-driven conveyor belt; an electronic teletyper ($16.95) that prints messages sent from another room or house; a Pan American clipper ($15.95) that automatically starts and stops its four engines separately, revs up its motors before scooting along the ground.

This year parents will also find themselves acting as ground crews for a whole series of projectile-spewing toys. Ideal Toy Corp. is ready for the Space Age with a truck-mounted satellite launcher ($4.98) and a skysweeper ($7.98) that throws a plane’s image onto a wall, then fires suction-cup projectiles at it. Gilbert’s train sets have a rocket launcher car ($10.29) that shoots a missile from the tracks, and Kusan-Auburn Inc.’s six-car atomic train ($39.95) automatically unleashes two missiles while the train is in motion.

Even the parent who decides on more conventional, nonmilitary toys will still have to deal with mechanized wonders, such as Knickerbocker’s battery-powered organ ($12.95), on which a child can learn to play such simple tunes as Oh! Susanna, Noel and Home, Sweet Home. This year’s line of autos includes Louis Marx’s battery-driven car ($23.95) which can be ridden by children from i^ to six, and Ideal’s clear-plastic model ($14.95), complete with electrical and differential systems, operating pistons and fan belt—130 parts in all for a parent to help assemble. For the medieval set, there is a pair of remote-control jousting knights ($15.00) that charge each other with lances, light the winner’s plume when a shield is hit.

Not even dolls have escaped the mechanical trend: F.A.O. Schwarz will attach a remote-control unit ($85) to any doll, allowing it to walk in any direction. But the most popular dolls are expected to be Ideal’s modernized Shirley Temple doll ($12.50), which nostalgic young mothers will have to explain to their daughters, and Miss Revlon ($2.98), a doll that can be outfitted with costumes ranging from a $1 smock to a fancy $250 mink coat. The little homemaker will find the appurtenances of the wonderful world of dolls more realistic than ever: from France comes an nin. metal shower ($9.95) that uses water, and from Japan a stove-and-sink combination ($3.95) with a burner that lights up and a tap that runs water, and a battery-operated automatic washing machine ($3) that washes doll clothes almost as efficiently as its adult counterpart.