What The…? Playskool Shows How Not To Innovate

Adweek has a piece up about a partnership between Hasbro’s Playskool and the digital entertainment company Creative Labs. They’re launching a new MP3 player targeted at the parents of infants from birth to 3, which will hit store shelves Sept. 1.

“The insight for the Playskool ‘Made for Me’ line is about delivering a unique system of toys and gear that resonate with new parents,” says Nancy Kufferman, Playskool’s senior brand manager. “These parents are primarily Gen X and Y and technology is typically a big part of their world. They not only embrace new technology, but they seek out ways to maximize its potential into their everyday lives.”

Okay. At this point in the story, we’re skeptical, but still open to the idea. Then we read that the MP3 player is designed to stimulate or soothe infants with a pre-loaded selection of digital music, or (now, pay attention) parents can customize it by transferring songs from CDs or downloading tunes from the Internet. WTF? Full stop. If you have to do work to have this thing play music what’s the point and is the pre-loaded music special somehow? Our bet is that any Gen x parents and definitely those in the Gen Y group either already have a baby-centric iPod ready to go or are using wi-fi throughout the house to get music offerings in every room. Why would anyone bother with this device other than it might be a pretty pink or blue?

Reading on – Playskool says that they wanted to create a product that would “allow parents access to music from legal Internet providers, and it wanted to develop products quickly to beat out any potential competition.” First off, who cares about whether parents have access to legal music? That should not be a concern of Playskool’s. Secondly, innovation is good, but it’s got to be good innovation, which – this is not. We don’t get this at all.