ASTRA Marketplace

LAS VEGAS—For a toy industry event that’s only a fraction of the size of Toy Fair, the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association’s 2007 ASTRA Marketplace & Academy this week offered a surprisingly expansive selection of toys and other children’s products on display.

“I wrote the most orders here!” Kazi Amed, manufacturer and publisher of the RainbowBrush markers and book-and-markers art sets, told Playthings, comparing his experience at both shows. The small Canada-based company’s newest offerings this year are its beautiful Alphabet Edition and Land and Seascapes sets; additional book sets, including those with flower, safari, Christmas, Far East and number themes, will be debuting soon.

Animator and cartoonist Gene Hamm, president of Hammination, was at the show this year debuting his how-to cartooning DVD, which is in specialty toy stores this summer. “Because it’s a DVD, kids can skip around to what they want to see,” Hamm told Playthings. The product is unique among how-to-draw tools in so that no hand blocks the view of the drawing in progress, he said, noting that the cartoons appear to draw themselves, step by step. Kids can print out the drawing guidelines as well, although a book of these may also be forthcoming, Hamm said.