On September 12th Hasbro unveiled its latest version of the old classic with rents starting at $20,000 and game pieces including a Motorola Razr cellphone.

Hasbro held an online contest to pick new properties for the game with New York’s Times Square getting the most votes and replacing Atlantic City’s Boardwalk. South Florida’s Miami-Dade Tourism bureau’s online voting campaign earned South Beach 14th place out of 22 and won it an orange square on the game’s new board. The game will retail for around $30

During the last decade or so, boys have moved away from playing with model cars and board games and have flocked towards two new diversions: video games and collectible card games. In what is considered by many in the industry, a big gamble, Mattel recently unveiled their new HyperScan. It is a high-tech hybrid which attempts to merge both, video gaming and collectible card playing into a relatively inexpensive combination of the two.

HyperScan’s first big game will be a collectible card game based on the Marvel X-Men comic book universe. Each card, about the thickness of six paying cards, will have an embedded chip that uses a new technology called radio frequency identification (RFID). The base unit will cost $70 and will read the RFID chips as cards are swiped over it. Instead of placing the cards on the table, as in customary card games, players swipe the cards over the base unit and later play a video game, by plugging the unit into a television set, using the characters and special moves in the cards that they swiped. The game’s winner’s cards are upgraded as a reward so they are more powerful in the next battle.

Mattel executives explained at the recent unveiling that after spending a lot of time talking to boys about what they want, it seems that boys really want both the competition from video games and the social interaction of playing, collecting and trading the cards, and “with HyperScan we’re really trying to bring those two forms together”.

In spite of analysts’ early reservations about HyperScan, mainly that it requires a television set to be played with and that existing alternatives, such as GameBoy and DS already have followers that number in the millions, Mattel is confident that HyperScan will help them to compete for the boys’ entertainment dollars in the upcoming holiday season and beyond.

William H. Macy and his real-life wife, Desperate Housewife’s Felicity Huffman, recently voiceover- starred in the completely new version of the 1957 classic, “The Abominable Snowman”. The DVD’s creators, two Harvard Business School graduates who formed a venture called Lean Forward Media, hope that their DVD’s will appeal to parents who don’t want to expose their kids to the violence of videogames or the zoned-out experience of watching television.

The new category of DVD entertainment launched a couple of months ago, hopes to distract kids ages 5 to 10 from videogames with a product that is more engaging than standard movies. The DVD’s allow viewers to control parts of the story by making choices with arrows on their remote. “The Abominable Snowman” offers 11 possible endings. Every few minutes, a bar appears on the screen showing choices and a clock that tells viewers how much time they have to choose. If the viewer doesn’t choose, the DVD chooses randomly.

With two young girls of their own who are not allowed to watch television until they learn to read, Mr. Macy and his wife were so drawn to the concept that they decided to forego payment for their work, instead taking stakes in the company. A parenting guru that was approached by Lean Forward Media about parenting concerns, decided to promote the DVD’s because she believes that the DVD’s will contribute to kids’ critical decision- making.

Of course, not all interactive DVD’s have such high aspirations, Hollywood’s Extra Large Technology has released a Bratz dolls’ “Living It Up” DVD and they have also licensed Build-a-Bear and Playmobil for future interactive DVD’s. Parents are again cautioned to choose carefully what they allow their kids to do.

Comic book enthusiasts got a year-early glimpse of the third installment of the Spider-Man movies (due out next summer) at the Comic-con convention in San Diego, California this summer. And from fan reviews, the third movie will be even better than the first two.

Attendees of the largest comic book convention got to see stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and three-time director, Sam Raimi along with Sandman, Venom and Mysterio, as well as 83-year old Spider-Man creator, Stan Lee who also has a cameo in the film.

Asked whether this would be the final installment, Maguire said “there will be some conclusions, though I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the end. We’re going to leave it open- ended. If there are stories worth telling, then we’ll tell them.”

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