The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Tablets, Turtles make ‘most wanted’ holiday toy list Posted: 28 Sep 2012 08:27 AM PDT NEW YORK, Sept 28 — Tablet computers, turtles and a new take on a furry old-timer are the hot toys retailers and manufacturers hope will spark a rebound from a dismal 2011 holiday season, according to a closely watched "Most Wanted" list released today. The industry is not just counting on best-selling toys to generate joy at the cash register. Major retailers are pushing more attractive layaway plans to lure shoppers into stores before they go elsewhere this holiday season.
"This year (there) is going to be more action early, and it's the battle of the layaway programmes," said Jim Silver, editor in chief of TimetoPlay.com, which released its "Most Wanted List" of toys today. "Everybody is being super aggressive, announcing the hot items, saying 'come get it on layaway.'" Walmart US, Wal-Mart's largest unit, brought layaway back a month early this year — giving shoppers who live paycheck-to-paycheck more time to pay for holiday gifts. Toys R Us Inc offered layaway with no upfront fee, and soon after, Walmart cut its upfront fee to US$5 (RM15) from US$15. The US$5 fee will be returned in the form of a Walmart gift card if all payments are completed on time — as the $15 fee would have been. Last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc used the layaway strategy successfully to boost sales, taking customers away from the likes of Toys R Us. Among this year's hot toys is LeapFrog Enterprises Inc's US$99.99 LeapPad 2 Explorer tablet (picture), an update on last year's massive holiday hit. The tablet made Time to Play's Holiday 2012 Most Wanted List, which is a hot read for toy industry executives. It was also featured on The Toy Insider, a holiday gift guide from a publisher that serves the toy and licensing industries, as well as gift lists from Walmart, Toys R Us and Sears Holdings Corp's Kmart. Time to Play's list includes returning old classics like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures; a princess wedding castle playset for Hasbro Inc's My Little Pony; Lego Friends; and an update of Hasbro's furry 1990s toy, Furby. Newer characters like Just Play's Doc McStuffins could be a hit. The doll based on the Disney Junior show has landed on lists from Time to Play, Toys R Us and Toy Insider. "The consumer looks for value," Time to Play's Silver said. "Parents look for things that a child will play with over and over." Other items on the list include Thomas & Friends's Steam and Speed remote control by Mattel unit Fisher-Price, and Winx Club Everyday Concert Collections by Jakks Pacific Inc. The list can be found on the website Hasbro is looking for a better holiday season this year than the one last year, when demand weakened after Thanksgiving. Larger rival Mattel saw international sales at holiday time hurt by a stronger dollar. At stores, shoppers will have options other than layaway. Toys R Us has introduced a programme this year that lets shoppers reserve any 50 toys on a list it will draw up by making a 20 per cent down payment in person at its stores by October. 31. Dollar General Corp said yesterday it is offering a 10 per cent discount on purchases of at least US$75 from its toy selection, which includes items by Mattel, Hasbro and Walt Disney Co. — Reuters |
| UN: Many nations lag in plan to slow extinctions by 2020 Posted: 28 Sep 2012 06:58 AM PDT  A whale shark is seen in the Galapagos Islands in this September 5, 2012 picture released to Reuters September 26, 2012. Only a few countries — including France, Guatemala and Britain — have so far adopted new national plans to tackle threats such as pollution or climate change in line with a sweeping pact agreed in Japan in 2010. "There is a lot more to do," David Cooper, head of the scientific, technical and technological unit at the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal, told Reuters by phone. Almost 200 nations will meet in Hyderabad, India, from October 8-19 to review progress towards goals to protect life on earth that UN reports say is suffering the biggest wave of extinctions since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago. Governments agreed in 2010 to 20 targets including phasing out damaging subsidies and expanding protected areas, for instance to save valuable coral reefs that are nurseries for fish or to slow deforestation from the Congo to the Amazon. "There is substantial progress. Is it fast enough to achieve the targets by 2020 for most of them? Probably not overall," Cooper said. Biodiversity is threatened by a projected rise in the human population to 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion now. "We need a step up in the activities," he said as part of a series of interviews on the outlook for Hyderabad. Biodiversity underpins everything from food to timber production. Many other countries, such as Australia, Brazil or China, were making progress. China, for instance, has made big strides in reforestation, Cooper said. The United States is not a member of the CBD. Nations have also been sluggish in ratifying a protocol laying out rules for access to genetic resources, such as rare tropical plants used in medicines, and ways to share benefits among companies, indigenous peoples or governments. So far, 92 nations have signed the Nagoya Protocol but just six have ratified, well short of the 50 needed for it to gain legal force. The target is for the protocol to be up and running by 2015. Over-optimistic "We were a bit too optimistic," said Valerie Normand, senior programme officer for access and benefit sharing at the CBD, who said the Secretariat had hoped for it to come into force this year. The Secretariat now expected entry into force in 2014. Cooper said many of the targets set for 2020 would save billions of dollars a year, by ensuring that farming, logging or fishing can be managed sustainably. Some fisheries, for instance, have been exploited to the point of collapse. In Nagoya, experts estimated that annual funding to safeguard biodiversity totalled about US$3 billion (RM9 billion) a year but some developing countries wanted it raised to about US$300 billion. "These are big numbers but they are trivial compared to the benefits we are getting from biodiversity. If we don't act the costs will be very much greater," Cooper said. Among concerns, 32 per cent of livestock breeds are under threat of extinction within the next 20 years, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says. And 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost since 1900. "Because we don't really know the full impacts of climate change down the line, we don't really know what's going to happen in terms of growing conditions around the world. It's just safer for us to have a lot of these other varieties in our pocket," said David Ainsworth, spokesman of the CBD Secretariat. Cooper said the pace of extinctions among the planet's estimated 9 million species — plants, animals from insects to whales but excluding legions of tiny bacteria — was perhaps 100 times the background rate estimated in fossil records. "If you project the rates into the future, the rest of the century, they are likely to be 100 times larger still," he said. The rising human population threatens ever more habitats with expanding cities, farms and roads. Among goals set in 2010 were to increase protected areas for wildlife to 17 per cent of the world's land area by 2020 and to raise marine areas to 10 per cent of those under national control. In 2010, respective sizes were 12.7 and 4 per cent. "I am optimistic" that the goal can be reached, said Sarat Babu Gidda, the CBD official who oversees protected areas. — Reuters |
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