How do manufacturers create the most desirable, must have toy in the weeks leading up to Christmas?
Almost every advertisement broadcast on children's television is aimed at the under 12 market and as usual, there is one toy that everybody wants.
They're bursting out of our TV screens.
These commercials are a part of a massive marketing campaigns to get parents and children into the shops.
Every year there are toys that become fads. Two years ago, it was the Teletubby and last year, the Furby. This year it's the Pokémon.
Cathal O'Dea, manager at Smyths Toy Store, outlines how marketing companies decide on what will be the big toy each Christmas.
Michael Cullen, Marketing Magazine, talks about the pressure placed on children through advertising and peer groups and the subsequent burden on parents resulting in,
A potent cocktail of variables affecting the success of the particular toy.
The marketing campaigns targetting parents and children aim to convince the need to have one toy over another.
Psychologist Colm Carey says that fads are created to make money for toy manufacturers.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 25 November 1999. The reporter is Anthony Murnane.
