The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 71

Top Of The Toybox Nintendo zaps competition as year's top toy Toy industry officials predict that 1989 sales will go up a few percentage points over last year, reaching 13 billion plus another $3 billion or more spent on video games. Sparkles whose jewelry twinkles when she is squeezed. Toy stores are filled with figures based on television and movie characters. Action figures from the tongue-in-cheek cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are the best-sellers, with the Real Ghostbusters and Batman not far behind. (Action figures usually sell for $3 to $8).

From the TV screen comes a talking Pee Wee Herman doll which squeaks out sayings such as, "What's that? Made you look!" Pee Wee can be matched in a battle of half-wits against the new talking Ernest P. Worrell doll whose sayings include, "Hey Vern. It's Ernest" and "Knowutamean?" High-speed miniature race cars are moving well. These 5- or 6-inch cars, costing $7 and up, travel at 15 mph to 30 mph on floors or tracks. Brands include Record Breakers, Matchbox Super Fast Cars and Super Changers.

Play musical instruments are popular, perhaps because of increased exposure to MTV and other cable television rock-music shows. The Hot Lixx guitar a battery-operated replica of an electric guitar, leads the pack of scaled-down musical instruments that include drums and saxophones. Vocalists can find a boom box that provides back-up instru-mentals and DynaMike a hand-held toy that synthesizes the voice into 16 different sounds. Board games popular this year include Encore a musical trivia game; Scattergories a word game for adults; Shark Attack ($13) a game for young children; and Girl Talk a truth or dare game that offers this teenaged punishment: Place a Zit Sticker on your face. Food toys remain popular with younger children.

This year, Fisher-Price offers a fast-food line, including McDonald's Crew Uniform ($10) and McDonald's Chicken McNuggets Make-a-Meal play sets ($5 and up) use Play-Doh to make pizza, fried chicken, burgers, pies and other food. A variety of action figures and wind-up toys allow food fights without a big mess. held, battery-operated Game Boy with a tiny black-and-white playing screen may become hard to find as Christmas nears. The larger Nintendo Action Set which hooks up to a monitor, topped the Toy and Hobby World magazine's list of October's bestsellers. Accessories range from game cartridges ($30 and up) popular this year are "Super Mario Bros.

II," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and the new "Dragon Warrior" to fancy control mechanisms, such as the Power Glove ($75) by Mattel. Competitors for the Nintendo-dominated video market this year include Sega and NES, both of which offer video-game systems with enhanced graphics and sound. At approximately $200, the Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 cost twice as much as Nintendo. Right behind Nintendo in fall sales was Barbie ($10 and up), now 30 years old. Popular with girls this year are Holiday Barbie UNI-CEF Barbie ($25, with 37 cents going to the United Nations children's fund), Barbie's '57 Chevy ($33) and her Ferrari G.I.

Joe Barbie's junior by five years, also has stayed on the best-seller list. New G.I. Joe figures this year include Slaughter's Marauders ($4 each), a troop led by Sgt. Slaughter, of pro wrestling fame. Other dolls expected to sell well include: Oopsie Daisy doll which crawls, falls over, cries and starts to crawl again; Li'l Miss Makeup doll which appears to be wearing make-up when wet; Cabbage Patch dolls including a new designer line; and P.J.

By ABBY KARP The Baltimore Sun shh. If you sit as quiet as a mouse, maybe you can make out the whispers of little children across the land as they write their Christmas lists. BARBIE! TEEN-AGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES! GHOST-BUSTERS! RECORD BREAKERS! G.I. JOE! OOPSIE DAISY! LI'L MISS MAKE-UP! And, just when you thought it was safe to take your hands off your ears: MORE Anyone who's followed toy sales in recent years, or watched Saturday morning cartoons in recent weeks, should not be surprised at what most kids are clamoring for: video games, dolls, fighting "action figures," toys based on characters from cartoons and movies. Toy industry officials predict that 1989 sales will go up a few percentage points over last year, reaching $13 billion plus another $3 billion or more spent on video games.

Though no single item, thus far, has created parental hysteria in stores, here are some of the most popular toys this season (prices are manufacturers' suggested retail prices or current store prices): Nintendo fever remains strong. One out of five American families now owns Nintendo equipment and the newest piece hand- Rated the safest car in America. Again. NOTHING DOWN WE WILL MAKE 12 YOUR MO. PAYMENT TIL THE "91 MODELS ARRIVE.

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