How to Make A Hot Holiday Toy

(TheStreet) -- Take that $50 Barbie doll with a digital camera and place it alongside a $9 16-pack of cute creature-shaped pencil toppers and you'll get a quick lesson in the anatomy of a hot holiday toy. With Toys R Us opening 600 pop-up shops this season, Target

and Wal-Mart

engaging in price warfare and the NPD Group finding that 34% of holiday shoppers will buy toys this year -- up from 32% last year, but still conservative compared to the 42% the National Retail Federation believes will be trolling for toys this season -- there's a lot riding on this holiday's hottest toys. But with the biggest toys as disparate as Mattel's

Barbie Video Girl and Blip Toys' bubble-encased penciltop Squinkies, how do retailers and parents even determine what's a hot toy and what's going to end up on the post-holiday bargain heap? "If there were a magic formula, everyone would be using it," Reyne Rice, toy trends expert for the Toy Industry Association. "There are a variety of different factors that can make your product more or less successful, but there's never a guarantee on any product." There are, however, two ways to narrow the odds. The first, and perhaps most difficult, is to build kid cred. The thing that fundamentally separates a hot toy from every other toy in the box are the schoolyard chatter, excited text messages and subtly sent links in parents' inboxes leading up to the holiday season. To make all of that possible, Rice says a toy needs to be visible enough that kids know what it is and easily explainable enough to friends and classmates to whip up a frenzy. From those whispers and wishes spring orders for millions of Silly Bandz, Zhu Zhu Pets and other small-time holiday must-haves.

.