Her instant fame even extended to a toy company making a "tanoerexic" action figure based on her.
"Although, like anything else, they're a toy company, they're selling a fantasy figure, a doll for kids to play with, " he said.
As a researcher for the virtual world contractor Electric Sheep, he's working with a major toy company to build a product that would exist in both real and virtual environments.
Bandai, a Japanese toy company, made millions of dollars by transferring the precepts of pet-keeping to the electronic world with tamagotchi.
Mr. Horvath: We realized that fans around the world weren't seeing us as a plush-toy company but as a brand like Paul Frank or Hello Kitty.
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Given that less than three months have passed since Google admitted that it had accidentally collected data from thousands of Wifi networks with its Street View cars, and that it still faces a legal probes in more than three dozen states, this is probably not a new toy that the company needs.
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Picked by the Ohio Art Company at a toy fair in 1959, Etch A Sketch went on to sell more than 100 million copies.
Though passed over in popularity for video games and gadgets, the toy has a steady market, the company has said.
According to NPD Group, a market research company that tracks the toy and videogame business, board-game sales overall are up 9% in the last year on the strength of strong performance of the classic segment, which includes Monopoly.
The most immediate affect of this controversy was for the stock value of the toy company that makes the Etch a Sketch to almost double.
Nor is it common in the fickle toy industry for one company to rule a market segment for long.
"You have to keep them up high, like scissors, or prescription drugs, " says Alan Schoem, a lawyer for the company that makes Buckyballs, the leading adult magnet toy on the market.
The toy is distributed in the U.S. by Brio , a public company based in Sweden that is known for wooden train sets.
Even when news stories play it straight down the "he says, she says, " line, who, as a parent, are you going to believe: the company protesting that its toy, usually assembled in China, is just fine and dandy, or the "watchdog" group warning that it's frighteningly dangerous and waving a test to prove it?
The toy is distributed in the U.S. by Brio, a public Swedish company known for wooden train sets.
"If it becomes just a toy in the box of a Happy Meal, then we're just a promotional company and we'll make a modest profit, " says investor Bippy Siegal, chairman of Raycliff Investments in New York.
If you want to move it to a new bank or fund company, you can do that and you have 60 days to toy with the money.
The process is neither cheap nor easy (Mattel already has 60 of its people working on the programme, and the independent auditors will employ several times that number), but the company reckons that, as the largest toy maker, it is vulnerable to a Nike-like scandal.
The company has taken the toy industry by storm since 1997, when the first Build-A-Bear Workshop store opened in St.
Mr Cameron gave the family a large tapestry with an eagle and American flag design by the Rug Company, silver bracelets for daughters Sasha and Malia, and a "bone-shaped chew toy with United Kingdom flag", presumably for Bo, the family's four-year-old dog.
What the company produces is a virtual good, the brand and the idea behind why you should buy that toy.
That hurts a company like Toys 'R' Us, one of the featured retailers in the Ecology Center's toy-testing laboratory.
The toy may seem old-fashioned in an age of tablet computers, but the Ohio Art Company says it still has a steady market, thanks in no small part to its appearance in the Toy Story movies.
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