New, long-term licensing deals between studios and master marketers such as Mattel and McDonald's mean the trend will continue. Indeed, Louis Marx Toy Co., the largest in the country back in the 1950s, never signed a single license. The slew of licensed toys leaves less time for imaginative play, and that, too, is causing worries. You learn flexibility when you play imaginatively. Their goal is to know more about children's preferences than even parents do.
Researchers host online chats, where kids are more apt to talk openly about personal matters.
They hire toddlers to play with new toys and then watch from behind a two-way mirror, often joined by psychologists. Nickelodeon alone surveys 4,000 children every week in its offices, at schools, over the phone, and on the Internet. Thanks in part to recent academic studies, marketers now know more than ever about the child psyche. That has helped them translate the urges and obsessions of different age groups into bigger sales. That urge used to be satisfied by sea shells or baseball cards, back before the latter became an investment opportunity.