Shop Safe: Drop Toys, Buy More Video Games?

That's what Kathleen Buczko, mother of three, plans to do this year to get around all the toy recalls and safety concerns aired in recent stories about companies like Mattel destroying hundreds of thousands of hazardous toys and recalling tens of millions more.

The effects of lead exposure in children, from an August 16, 2007 McClatchy article on U.S. business culpability in the Chinese toy recall.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson in an L.A. Times article today, video games are poised to benefit from this year's toy scare.

Game makers' sales are forecast to climb 19% or more, according to Wedbush Morgan Securities, fueled by lower prices for consoles, a plethora of must-have games such as "Super Mario Galaxy" and the popularity of Nintendo Co.'s Wii and hand-held DS consoles, which appeal to a broad age range. At the same time, retail toy sales are expected to decline by 2%, to $23 billion, said Gerrick Johnson, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets.

"There's definitely money leaving that sector," he said. "It's logical to assume that video games might be viewed by some parents as an alternative."

NPD's Anita Frazier is less bullish about game sales being driven by toy recalls, noting that most toy sales are driven by kids younger than the "kick-in" age of 8 or 9.

I'm with Frazier. Other than whatever's happening with a few "edutainment" hybrids from companies like Jumpstart, I don't think video game sales are outpacing the rest of the economy this year 4-to-1 because of the toy scare. Not even contributing a little. This is about the next phase in the shift of electronic games into the same space currently reserved for media like TV and movies.

Which, if I'm right, is very cool given all the huffing and puffing about "games as art." By contrast, comic books and graphic novels may have finally "arrived" in terms of public recognition as legitimate aesthetic vehicles, but they're both still marginal in terms of audience size. Games on the other hand are progressively pervasive, with franchises like Halo and Guitar Hero selling tens of millions of copies (not to mention glittering newcomers like Wii Sport and Wii Play) and propelling the economics alone past movie (and soon enough, DVD and rental) numbers. I don't want to say games have arrived, but they're sure as heck in the process of arriving.

If anything, this year's sales numbers look more like a standing trade-up (toys for games) than some temporary, reactionary compromise.

In any case, I'm just glad we're moving past the point where we think of video games as merely toys.

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