Results tagged “toys”

Barbie megastore now open on Huai Hai Road

Pssst, guess what? The six story monolith to America's favorite representation of unattainable beauty standards has now been fully realized! Today, the 3400-square-foot Barbie flagship shop on 555 Huai Hai Zhong Road opened its doors officially and let in the public.

           

Shanghai-based photographer Andreas Larsson takes us around the Suzhou production facilities of Lelo, a Swedish high-end sex toy label that manufactures adult toys for upwardly mobile women. We hear they're known for producing dildos so cute you'll want to put them into your handbag and carry them with you wherever you go. Now who says you can't be horny and classy at the same time?

Hot on the heels of the widely-discussed closure of the Hong Kong-listed Dongguan-based toy manufacturer Smart Union comes the news that yet another toy factory — this time a much smaller one — has gone bankrupt. Once again, the local government has come to the rescue, picking up the tab for lost wages that the now jobless employees are demanding to prevent their anger from boiling over. Do we see a pattern for the future?

Even as news of the sudden closure of the Hong Kong-listed Dongguan-based toy manufacturer Smart Union, a key supplier to Mattel and Disney, continue to hog international headlines, framed against the backdrop of the ongoing financial crisis that has spread from the United States to the rest of the world, Xinhua says it has the "whole truth" on those closures, and makes the case that many other toy factories had been closing since the start of the year and the most recent closures have little to do with economic troubles in the U.S.:

While there are reports that in the first seven months of the year, more than 3,600 toy makers already went out of business in China thanks to factors such as rising wages and material costs.

           

TheHong Kong Lego User Group, HKLUG, has joined in the Olympic craze, by making their own models of Beijing Olympic venues: The Lego Sport City. According to HKLUG's blog: 300,000 bricks and 4,500 mini-figures have been used to create this lego landscape, which has taken about 100 hours to build.

In more Olympics mascot merchandising news, look what we've just found. The perfect souvenir - a Fuwa action hero figure! But wait a minute — where's our favorite taxi driver Fuwa? Coming soon to a street corner near you. (h/t sinosplice)

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