Odra Heitmann hauled the heavy package labeled "Dora's Talking Kitchen" off a Toys R Us shelf and set it on the floor for a better look.
Splashed on the box was a promo: "Says Phrases in English and Spanish!" The purple blurb sealed the deal for Heitmann, who scooped up the gift for her 1-year-old niece Ashley.
"I made a big mistake by not teaching my kids Spanish," said Heitmann, 37, on a recent Saturday afternoon in the Burbank store. "I'm not going to make the same mistake with my niece."
Say \o7hola \f7and hello to the latest toy fad. Spurred by a growing immigrant population in the U.S. and a push to teach children a foreign language at an earlier age, toy makers and consumers are going bilingual.
Spanish-English bilingual toys have become especially popular in the last few years, thanks in part to Fisher-Price's wildly successful Dora the Explorer product line, based on the Nickelodeon cartoon about Dora Marquez, a 7-year-old bilingual Latina girl.
During the last holiday season, Toys R Us Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. highlighted bilingual toys as one of the biggest shopping trends, listing products by Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price division, LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. and VTech Holdings among the most popular. And this year, bilingual toys are poised to become even hotter.
"There's been a shift in the culture, where speaking two languages is more popular," said Reyne Rice, a trend specialist with the Toy Industry Assn. "And now, second- and even first-generation Americans are saying, 'No, we're proud of our heritage, and we want our kids to embrace our language,' " she said.
For the first time, Latinos -- the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the country at 42.7 million -- will flex more spending power than any other minority group in the U.S., according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business. Latino disposable income will swell to $863.1 billion this year, up 8.1% from 2006, the Selig Center estimates.
"You couple that with the fact that the average Latino household has four kids per household -- compared to the average household, which has 2.3 -- and you're looking at a huge opportunity," said Carlos Conejo, president of Multicultural Associates, which specializes in helping companies sell to multicultural markets in the U.S. "It's a huge, untapped market."
