2008 Girl Toy of the Year Award

This is the second post in my series of trying to “guess” the winners for the Toy Industry Associations awards which will be announced in February. Today we look at the nominees for Girl Toy of the Year.

Disclaimor: I am not a member of the Toy Industry Association and I do not have any inside information.  With 5 nominees in each category, I have a 20% chance of guessing the correct winner for a category.

The nominees in this category are Barbie Girls by Mattel, Hannah Montana Singing Dolls, High School Musical 2 Two-Pack Gabriella & Troy Dolls, Littlest Pet Shop Display & Play Round & Round Pet Town Playset by Hasbro, and Troop Groovy Girls by Manhattan Toy.

Let’s see, the Troop Groovy Girls are really cute but kind of specialized and hard to find in stores. The dolls are all variations of a helpful girl scout theme. I think they should have been nominated in the Specialty Toy category. Of the remaining 4, only the Littlest Pet Shop is not in the doll category.  It was a big seller last year and definitely designed for the toddler/pre-school age.

I am going to go with the Barbie Girls because there is a little more to it than a doll that sings.  The Barbie Girls is first an MP3 player. The reviews say it is easy to use and download music and it’s a great price for the capacity. Second it comes with barbiegirls.com which provides hours of online interactive play either individually or with friends.

You can see from my choices for the first two categories, I am favoring the toys that bring hours of play time. 

Find where to purchase any of these award winning toys here.