When tech toys attack

This is the first holiday season in seven that I won't be reviewing tech and other toys for TV, radio and/or print. It's mostly a matter of time and focus on my part; I did, after all, go to Toy Fair in February and followed the introductions of many new toys through the fall.

While this means I won't be able to share several cool toys I've seen (I'm particularly fond of Tyco R/C's Terrain Twister, for example), I can share a handful of general tips on what to avoid in tech toys this holiday season -- based on seven years of bad luck with a few hits and many misses.

Beware the hot toy. This season there doesn't seem to be a single "must-have" toy, and that's a good thing -- scenes of people fighting at Toys 'R Us, with the exception of those involving bankruptcy lawyers, are never fun. The problem with many hot toys is that they are high-concept toys, easily understood immediately, but don't necessarily stand up to repeat play by kids. They're like the clever hit song on the radio that you like at once but sicken of by the fourth or fifth replay (I was a DJ when Disco Duck was released; I know).

Into this category I have to put the once-hot Elmo. Don't get me wrong, Elmo is cute. And he certainly had a banner Christmas years ago with Tickle Me Elmo. But the subsequent Elmos have been subsequently less charming -- the annoying Hokey Pokey Elmo, for one, has been exclusively re-released through Toys R'Us -- and I think Elmo might have finally jumped the shark with this year's E-L-M-O (if you thought Disco Duck was a dated reference, Elmo singing Y-M-C-A is a pretty close second). Beware the one-trick Elmo.

Make sure it works later. Electronic toys, while they can do many advanced things, increasingly rely on lots of batteries and -- frequently -- outside or add-on products to make sure they can do anything at all. InteracTV, which lets kids using a wireless hand-held controller to interact with familiar TV programs, requires a DVD player and a supply of the unique Fisher-Price DVDs. VideoNow Color, while an improvement over the grainy and slightly fuzzy black-and-white VideoNow, requires a supply of the special-format Hasbro VideoNow discs. The interactive Batwave Batman toys require specially encoded Batman episodes to air in your area to get the full play use out of the toy.

Sometimes this symbiosis falls apart. Tiger Electronics was forced to withdraw its hand-held Wheel of Fortune Live Play game (which allowed you to play along as a fourth player with broadcasts of Wheel of Fortune in real time, a very cool idea) this year when it turned out the device just didn't work well in the real world. Now you can expect it next spring. If a toy relies on something outside of it to work, make sure that something outside of it is available where you are, and if so, that it's in plentiful supply.

Don't believe all "experts." I originally got the idea for this essay while walking on a treadmill in a NYC hotel fitness room the Wednesday after Thanksgiving, glancing at some toy/gadget guru on NBC's Today Show. It seemed to my sweaty ears that he never said anything negative about a single item he was "reviewing." That should have raised a yellow flag among those watching (I liked to give both pros and cons, when appropriate, to gadgets and toys I reviewed for KCPQ-TV Fox Seattle, as well as in print for Seattle Weekly and on the radio for NPR affiliates and many others).

No toy is absolutely perfect, though some come close. And it's an open secret within the toy industry that a lot of the "experts" you see on TV pitching toys -- more so on local TV stations than on networks -- are paid. Not by stations. By toy manufacturers.

It's called the satellite media tour, and many of those breathlessly exhorting the wonders of the toys they tout don't actually pick the toys. Their production companies are paid by the manufacturers of each of the toys or gadgets featured as they repeat the same pitch on dozens of TV stations around the country -- stations that won't pay for their own experts, but are happy to fill a morning or other show with a "free" satellite toy feed.

As with anything, there are exceptions. The well-known Chris Byrne (a.k.a. The Toy Guy) is someone I'd believe no matter who was paying the bills, as he selects his toys himself and has a genuine enthusiasm for play and for the industry. He's a class act. The guy on the Today Show, well, he was probably just unrealistically chipper.

And there's one other "expert" I'd believe wholeheartedly this holiday season. That's the one you have in your neighborhood, home or deep inside yourself. If you can't trust your inner eight-year old when it comes to deciding what's fun, whom can you trust?