​Associations, Shows, Awards, Events, and Festivals

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The 2024 Oscars were the most watched in four years. The Jimmy Kimmel-hosted telecast on ABC averaged 19.5 million viewers, according to time zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen. That’s a 4 percent increase from a year ago. The 96th Academy Awards scored the biggest audience for any awards show since 2020, when that year’s Oscars — held a month before the U.S. went into lockdown in the early days of the...

Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron walked away from last night’s 96th Academy Awards with the Best Animated Feature trophy—subverting many industry predictions that Sony’s superhero sequel Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse would win. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Heron is the first movie with a PG-13 rating to come out on top in this Oscar category, which has favored younger-skewing...

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GAMA Expo wrapped up its first Louisville, Kentucky show with record numbers, organizers announced at a public board meeting late Wednesday.  According to those preliminary numbers total attendees were at 2736, up 34% from the previous year.  890 retailers attended, up from 562 in 2023, representing 436 stores, up from 373 in the previous year.  Exhibit booths were up by about the same ratio, to 300 from 192...

The Bologna Licensing Awards 2024 has announced its shortlist, and Pokémon leads the field with four nominations. Now in its seventh year, this annual awards program celebrates international licensors/agencies, licensees and retailers. A total of 182 submissions were received from around the world, and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony taking place on the first day of the 61st-annual...

*** The above posted after March 8th ***

The Toy Foundation™, the philanthropic arm of The Toy Association™, is proud to announce $380,000 has been awarded to 20 children's hospitals and health systems that serve under-resourced communities, as part of its 2024 Childrens Hospital Play Grants program. More than 240,000 children in need will benefit from this initiative, which funds innovative play therapy projects proven to significantly improve care...

ToyFest Names 2024 Best of ToyFest Winners. There are nine winners in categories including Arts & Crafts, Building & Construction, and more. ToyFest 2024 concluded earlier this week at The Expo at World Market Center in Las Vegas. The trade show, originally known for its West Coast presence, expanded into the larger national market just last year and hasn’t slowed down since.

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The Toy AssociationTM today announced the election of seven new members and two term renewals to its Board of Directors, including the election of Sharon Price John, president & CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, as chairperson. The announcement was made during The Toy Association’s Annual General Meeting, which was open to all toy industry stakeholders.

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Mattel to host virtual event: Mattel Creations Revealed. The event will take place from March 21-22. Mattel Creations is bringing fans a two-day virtual experience this spring called Mattel Creations Revealed. The event will include live streams with toy designers, digital tours of employees’ cubes decked out with brand-new and archival products, and a closer look into niche Mattel jobs.

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The Toy Association launches ‘Let’s Play — A Playbook for All Abilities’. The Genius of Play, a national movement spearheaded by The Toy Association to highlight the importance of play in child development, launched a free guide today, March 1, the first day of Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month. 

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Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2024 to be held in USA. The world’s best duelists will converge in Seattle on 7th-8th September for the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship, while the World Championship Qualifier dates have also been confirmed. Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. (Konami) has announced that the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship is coming to the USA for the first time since 2016. 

Registration opens for INDX Toy & Gift. INDX Toy & Gift is back, returning to Cranmore Park with a two day show from Tuesday 3rd September to Wednesday 4th September 2024. Welcoming all retailers, this is a fantastic opportunity to network with the industry in a friendly, buyer and business focused setting, whilst exploring an exciting edit of top brands. 

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Starlight Children’s Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to delivering happiness to hospitalized kids, has launched its Power of Play campaign. The month-long campaign starts today and aims to raise $225,000 for its programs through different activations, including its annual Stream for Starlight Spring Steam event, and bring awareness to the healing power of play for kids in hospitals.

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The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television has announced this year’s Canadian Screen Awards nominees in 156 TV, film and digital media categories. Leading the kids field with eight nods, Pinecone & Pony made the cut in six categories, including Best Animated Program and Best Writing – Animation, where three separate episodes were shortlisted. Spin Master’s PAW Patrol franchise was also nominated in multiple...

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Safety and Counterfeiting

Test shows toxic chemicals in food containers, toys made of recycled plastic. Test shows toxic chemicals in food containers, toys made of recycled plastic. The laboratory analysis of the recycled plastic samples showed that 10 of the 15 samples had presence of one or more chemicals, including BPA, CPs (SCCPs), heavy metals (As, Cd and Cr), phthalates (DEHP and DINP) and Nonylphenol, a chemical declared...

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RIP - Rest in Play - Remembering Those that have Passed

If you know of a colleague's passing, please send us information so we may share with our readers. Archives can be found HERE

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Akira Toriyama, creator of the Dragon Ball, Sand Land, and Dr. Slump manga and the character designer for Dragon Quest and other video games, died on March 1 at the age of 69. The news was announced in a letter from his design and production studio, Bird Studio. The cause of death was given as “acute subdural hematoma,” and his family held a private funeral and requested that no gifts or flowers be sent.
“It’s our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation with great enthusiasm,” the letter said. “Also, he would have many more things to achieve.”

As the creator of two best-selling series, Toriyama was hugely influential in Japan, and many manga-ka cite him as a significant influence on their work. In North America, Dragon Ball was an early hit and helped expand the audience for manga and anime to include teens.

Toriyama was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1955 and studied graphic design in high school, eschewing college for a job with a local ad agency. His first published manga was Wonder Island, which appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1978, and over the next two years several more of his stories appeared in the magazine (these were later collected and published in English by VIZ Media under the title Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater).
In 1980, Toriyama came up with a goofy comedy manga about an inventor who creates a super-strong robot girl. The series ran for five years in Weekly Shonen Jump, and both the manga and the anime adaptation were massive hits. In Manga! Manga!, scholar Frederick Schodt writes that Toriyama’s income in 1981, when he was 27, was over $2.4 million, and in 1982, the series won the Shogakukan Manga Award.
Dr Slump made Toriyama a star, but Dragon Ball made him a superstar. As his editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, told the story in a 2016 interview with Forbes, Toriyama decided he wanted to move on from Dr Slumpabout six months after it launched, but it was the most popular manga in Shonen Jump and his editors didn’t want him to quit unless he came up with something even better. Torishima suggested a kung fu series, since Toriyama liked to watch kung fu movies while he worked, and this eventually evolved into Dragon Ball, which Torishima described as a “road movie” based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West. The series ran in Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995 and was collected into 42 volumes. It is one of the top selling manga of all time, with over 260 million volumes sold throughout the world. It was also adapted into two very successful anime series, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. The different titles reflect a change in tone, as the manga started out with a lot of gags and slapstick humor but eventually evolved into a more action-focused story....

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Janice Burgess, a longtime Nickelodeon television executive who sought to promote children’s curiosity and sense of play for decades, overseeing popular shows like “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bill” and creating her own musical children’s show, “The Backyardigans,” died on Saturday in hospice care in Manhattan. She was 72.

Her death was confirmed by Brown Johnson, a longtime friend and the creator of Nick Jr., who said the cause was breast cancer.

In “The Backyardigans,” five cartoon animals — Tyrone, Tasha, Pablo, Austin and Uniqua — imagine their backyard as a place of adventure, traversing deserts, oceans, jungles, rivers and outer space while dancing and singing to music.

With the series, Ms. Burgess hoped to help children use their imaginations to have fun. In 2004, Ms. Burgess said in an interview with The New York Times that the idea for the show stemmed from memories of playing in her own childhood backyard in Pittsburgh.

“I really remember it as a wonderful, happy, safe place,” she said. “You could have these great adventures just romping around. From there, you could go anywhere or do anything.”

The series became a favorite of American preschoolers after it premiered on Nickelodeon in 2004. It was adapted into a live show, “The Backyardigans Live! Tale of the Mighty Knights,” in 2008.

In 2021, several “Backyardigans” songs, including “Into the Thick of It!” and “Castaways,” found a large and nostalgic audience on TikTok, years after their original release in 2005.

“Janice really taught me about representation in kids’ media and how important it was for kids to not only see themselves, but hear themselves,” Ms. Johnson said.

Ms. Burgess made sure to cast children of color, and the roles were recast every few years as their voices changed, Ms. Johnson said. Ms. Burgess wanted their voices to sound natural and “not Broadway,” she said. Ms. Burgess, a music lover, included 80 distinct musical genres in “The Backyardigans,” Ms. Johnson added.

“It was like writing a musical every week,” she said.

The music was composed by Evan Lurie, who said in an interview that Ms. Burgess’s “ability to cut to the meat of what needed to be done was just astonishing.”

Janice Burgess was born on March 1, 1952, to John Wesley Burgess and Alma Naomi (Thomas) Burgess. She grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh and attended the Ellis School, a girls’ college preparatory school. She graduated from Brandeis University in 1974, according to the university’s website.

She worked at WQED, the public television station in Pittsburgh, and Sesame Workshop before joining Nick Jr. in 1995. Working at Nick Jr. taught her everything she needed to know about creating a television show for young children, she said at a National Press Club luncheon in 2006.

At Nick Jr., she oversaw the production of “Blue’s Clues” and “Little Bill,” which went on to win Peabody and Emmy Awards. She won a 2008 Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding special class animated program for her work on “The Backyardigans.” In a statement, Nickelodeon called Ms. Burgess “one of the great architects of Nick Jr.”...

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John Birchwood.  Toy World is sad to report that popular toy trade stalwart John Birchwood passed away on 21st February.

John was born in Nelson, Lancashire in 1940 and educated at Manchester Grammar School. He started working in a retail store for Woolworths, before joining his father, Eric Birchwood, working for Mobo Toys. After that he moved to Chad Valley and subsequently joined Berwick Toys as sales director, eventually becoming managing director.

After the collapse of Berwick Toys and the Berwick Timpo Group in the early 1980s, some of its assets were bought from the administrators by A.B.Gee, where John worked for a short period before setting up on his own as a sales agent (Birchwood Agencies) with the help of his father, Eric. Amongst the companies John represented was Morris Vulcan (MV Toys) and after a number of years, John went to work for MV before establishing his own company, World Sports Int. UK in partnership with a Taiwanese manufacturer, which dealt predominantly in roller skates and in-line skates. In the early years of World Sports Int. (WSI), the company was the main supplier of in-line skates to mail order giants Littlewoods and GUS.

In 1994, John’s son Richard joined the business but unfortunately it was forced to close a few years later due to a series of production issues with the Taiwanese manufacturer. Richard takes up the story and explains what happened next: “In August 1998, with not a penny between us and the financial help of some of Dad’s friends from the toy industry (you know who you are and we are eternally grateful) and a friend of mine, we started J & R Sports, originally operating out of a 5,000 square foot warehouse in Aintree. In April 1999 my sister Lindsay also joined us. After a difficult first couple of years when the in-line skate business was slow, we introduced our JD Bug Scooter range in 2000 and from there the business went from strength to strength. In 2007 we relocated to a bigger warehouse in Huyton that we still run today. In 2011 we became the distribution partner for Madd Gear the UK & Ireland: this was the start of the pro scooter market and Madd Gear was a leading player. In 2012 we relocated again to our current location in Aintree.”

John continued to work until his 80th birthday, when he announced his retirement, just before the first Covid lock down. Although Richard admitted: “He continued to come into work over the next three years, never being able to stay too far away. He wanted to know how we were doing, what was happening in the trade and would avidly read Toy World to stay in touch with what was going on.”

As well as being a proud grandfather, John was also an avid Manchester United fan. However during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, John decided to join his son Richard watching Liverpool, taking him to his first European Cup final in Paris in 1981, with fellow toy doyen Ronnie Yaffe. Also a member of the local Mini Motoring Club, John would often take Mini trips around the UK and Scotland.

In memory of John, Richard and the family have started a tribute page that contains details of his funeral and also for his friends from the toy trade to share their memories of him with his family.

Our sincerest condolences to John’s children – Richard, Lindsay and Rachel – and his six grandchildren Emma, Olivia, Lily, Amelia, Zac and Ace, and all of John’s former friends and colleagues from the toy community.

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Mark Dodson, a voice actor across video games, TV, and film, died from a heart attack over the weekend. He was 64.

Per TMZ, Dodson was attending Horror Con in Indiana on Saturday, where he's said to have had a heart attack while sleeping.

"Mark truly loved his fans and enjoyed meeting them at conventions around the world," wrote his talent agent Stellar Appearances. "[He]...added his unique voice and sound to each character and script he touched."

Dodson's voice acting career in games includes the Ghostrunner series as Adam Hamada and Barnabas in the Grim Dawn series. He also provided voices for Anamoly 2, various Nancy Drew titles, and Painkiller: Hell & Damnation.

Paul Crawford, creator of the Bendy games, gave his own condolences. Dodson previously voiced Nathan Arch in 2022's Bendy & the Dark Revival.

"Mr. Dodson had an amazing career, and I am honored he took part in our game," wrote Crawford. "Thank you, Mark."

Outside of games, Dodson is best known as the voice of Mogwai in Gremlins and Star Wars' Salacious B. Crumb. He returned to voice several Gremlins in that film's sequel, and reprised Crumb for 2022's Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

Dodson is survived by his daughter Ciara and his grandchildren. Ciara, speaking to TMZ, said he "never ceased making me proud."

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