I wonder why there aren't more video games at this show.

That was my first thought after making one lap through the Jacob J. Javits Center in Manhattan at the American International Toy Fair 2006. After trudging through mounds of muddied slush across Manhattan to get the world's biggest greenhouse/conference center, I saw pretty much everything one could expect and more on the exhibit floors: a life-size Terminator model, spooky robotic teddy bears, roulette tables, trampolines, giant dollhouses, and a guy that appeared to be selling roses from some strange contraption on top of his head (at first I wondered why someone was selling roses, and then I remembered Tuesday was a certain holiday that ladies mark on their calendars and guys do not). The Toy Fair even had Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and staff writer for The New Yorker, as the keynote speaker Sunday. Armed with an exceedingly sharp mind and an eye for detail, Gladwell penned The Tipping Point and Blink!, which have established him as a recognizable star (though I can't help thinking that if you saw Paul Simon next to Gladwell that it would be impossible to not think you were looking at Art Garfunkel). Unfortunately, I missed Gladwell's keynote, as I'm sure many people did, because of Sunday's blizzard.

But when I did arrive at the show - after the initial sensory overload brought on by the scores of action figures, board games, puzzles, and dolls wore off - I was immediately struck by how small a presence video and computer games had at the show. The Toy Fair had a special section, dubbed e@play, on the exhibit floor dedicated to games, computers and digital entertainment, but it was a fairly small area; looking at the event map, e@play was about the same size as the "Urban Bazaar" section for indie art toys. At times it seemed like there were poker tables and roulette wheels than games on the exhibit floor.

Why aren't there more games at this show, I wondered? After all, sales of video games aimed at children between the ages of 6-12 represent an enormous chunk of the overall games market. Is it because the video game industry has grown into its own market that publishers, developers and console makers don't need events like the Toy Fair? Or perhaps traditional toy makers are worried about digital technology and computers rendering their board games and action figures obsolete? I'm not sure if either possibility was true. I did, however, encounter a few interesting exhibitors with some new and compelling offerings. Here are a couple notables in no particular order: