Sharks and clown fish trade waves for clouds…

This powerful toy is making waves at Toy Fair

A swing dancing couple brings their daughter’s dream to life.

It’s a British Invasion!

The inventor of Puppet Heap has a whole cast of characters in his toy town, including a cabdriver from outer space:

The trend for tiny, inexpensive collectible toys has taken a giant leap at Toy Fair 2011, according to Bloomberg. Building on the success of Iwako erasers, as well as last year’s teensy hits Squinkies (Blip Co.) and Zoobles (SpinMaster), Ty is producing a new line of Beanie Eraserz, that look like tiny rubber Beanie Babies. They cost just $1 each. Spin Master will offer 100 different collectible erasers called Gomu, each $0.99. They’ll also offer a $4.99 six pack and a play set with two erasers for $14.99. LEGO is …

Hoping to cut into some of LEGO’s hold on the building block market, Hasbro is introducing a new building line called Kre-O, which is compatible with LEGO’s blocks. The first line will feature characters from the “Transformers” movies. Another building system — Uberstix — is not only compatible with LEGO, but was also designed explicitly to mate with Erector and K’Nex as well. The Uberstix philosophy, though is not to take over other brands, but to give kids as many play options as possible to increase creativity, save money, and …

The New York Toy Fair weather is fine today, reported ToyDirectory’s correspondents, and the basement is heating up. The lower floor at the Javits Center  is where most of the newest, independent toy and game inventors go to show off their babies. All successful specialty toy retailers know this, and usually hit the downstairs first at Toy Fair, spending most of their time looking for something they (and their little customers) have never seen before. TD staff reported that the morning was slow, but by noon, the toy retailers started …