At KidZui, it is my job to know all of the kids’ trends that your kids are into. Little kids are easy. They’re intrigued by anything to do with animals, animation, and absolutely adore songs that make them laugh. Where it becomes tricky is the tween set. “Tweens” refer to the age group of 8 to 12. These kids are stuck between wanting to be children and wanting to be teens; a pretty complex dilemma! Tweens have, in recent years, become a huge focal group to marketers and creators of multimedia. A whole new world of television, movies, music and clothing has emerged just for them.
An obvious trend over the past few months (or even past few years if you’re familiar with it), have been the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Jumping off from the success of the Harry Potter series based on wizardry, Twilight has introduced a whole new world of vampires, werewolves and young love. The Twilight series has been marketed to almost everyone, from tweens to adults, and the following it has acquired is huge. The series became so popular that Summit Entertainment bought the rights to the books and made a movie – released last year. This pushed the books into the mainstream even more making almost everyone aware of it, even quite possibly your child. While the PG-13 rated movie doesn’t seem like it would be appropriate or interesting for KidZui’s 3 to 12 target audience, the mania surrounding it has probably made your child very curious about all the buzz. Rest assured, KidZui does have all the awesome Twilight content your kids are looking for, plus all the content meets KidZui’s strict editorial guidelines; this should be enough to satiate your child’s Twilight appetite without exposing too much! The sequel to Twilight, New Moon, will release later this year on November 20th.
Another very popular trend and top web-destination of KidZui users is WebKinz. Kids love being able to interact in virtual worlds and adopt virtual pets. However, a certain level of know-how is required in being involved in these virtual worlds. Kids have to know how to use a mouse and be able to type and spell on a keyboard to get the full experience. Unfortunately, this seems to leave out the younger kids who just aren’t there yet. But there is good news for our youngsters coming this Spring! The online phenomenon, WebKinz, is currently developing an online experience made specifically for these young children (3-6 year olds) who are still perfecting their motor-skills and are just learning about computers and how to use them independently. Howard Ganz, president of Ganz, said, “Webkinz Jr. is a world for younger children to discover, where learning and daily activities can be chosen by parents to meet their child’s needs.” (http://www.giftsanddec.com/article/CA6626603.html). WebKinzJr.com is already included in KidZui and awaiting the much anticipated launch in late Spring, so keep an eye out for it!
