What are the hot new toys for kids? Here are our 4 favorites

What could be better than being set loose in a toy store? How about getting to roam through a toy convention?

That's we did when the trade show for the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association came to the Twin Cities this month, briefly turning a cavernous exhibit hall of the Minneapolis Convention Center into a sort of Santa's workshop on steroids. (It was the first big convention at the Convention Center since the start of the pandemic.)

Nearly 300 exhibitors were on hand to show off the latest in toy trucks, cars, trains, dolls, blocks, puzzles and games, while toy shop owners browsed for merchandise that they hope they'll be selling you.

Business has been good for toy makers during the pandemic, although costs have gone up thanks to supply chain blockages and price increases in container shipping from Asia, where many toys are manufactured.

Families stuck together at home snapped up puzzles and games over the past year and half, according to vendors at the convention. And parents sought out science kits and other educational toys to help kids learning at home. Chess boards were a hot item thanks to the hit Netflix show "The Queen's Gambit." The search for safe, outdoor activities meant that sales of sidewalk chalk and kites have soared.

"There was a big bubble craze," said Ron Weizman, co-founder of a Florida-based bubble solution company, South Beach Bubbles. "It was very good for outdoor toy sales in general."

And we've all been spending a lot of time sitting in front of screens. That's driven demand for distracting, stress-relieving, handheld-manipulation toys.

"We're seeing incredible demand," said toy putty maker "Crazy" Aaron Muderick. "Fidgeting is in."

Here are some of our favorite toys at the show:

The "Crazy Aaron" line of "Thinking Putty" ($3-$15) makes squeezing a blob of squishy silicone more engaging than you might imagine. One putty is magnetic. Others change colors when kneaded or exposed to light. One type is a clear putty embedded with hundreds of smiling emoticons. Your goal is to squish it around in search of hidden unusual faces.

The Philadelphia toy maker (crazyaarons.com) also sells a line of "luxury" modeling dough called "Land of Dough." The wheat-flour dough includes environmentally friendly glitter and "secret natural ingredients to make it feel wonderful," according to company founder Muderick. The dough line ($12-$25) features wooden tools and "a calming, invigorating and mindful scent" with hints of lavender, camomile and lemongrass.

You could buy ordinary sidewalk chalk sticks as stocking stuffers, or you could give adorable handmade designer chalks shaped like sushi rolls, cupcakes, French fries, macarons or ice cream cones.

They're made by the appropriately named Twee chalk company based in Philadelphia (tweemade.com) and come in sets ranging from $12 to $50.

Scribble Hips is what happens when a game inventor decides the world needs a hands-free version of Pictionary. You just strap on a belt holding a marker and try to draw a clue on an easel worn by another player by just wiggling your hips.

Players can opt to draw easy clues like "unicorn," "sailboat" or "shark," or hard clues like "The Beatles," "candelabra" or "Nicole Kidman."

Game makers Barry & Jason (barryandjason.com) showed off a prototype of the game at the convention. Look for it on the market for $25 by this holiday season.

The Gel Blaster (gelblaster.com) is creator Colin Guinn's answer to paintball, airsoft and Nerf guns. It's a rechargeable, battery-powered shooting toy that sprays out a rapid-fire stream of biodegradable, nonstaining, nontoxic, water-based polymer water bead pellets — or "gellets" — that pop and dissolve when they hit something.

The blaster ($70) is designed for backyard play, with pellets that don't hurt as much as paintball and don't have to be picked up and reloaded like Nerf guns.

The ammunition is cheap: Packets of 10,000 tiny beads about the size of a mustard seed cost $9 apiece. You soak the beads in a gallon of water, and they swell up to squishy pea-sized pellets. Each blaster can carry up to 800 pellets at a time. They shoot out at the rate of 10 to 12 gellets per second.

"You just pull the trigger and it shoots out a whole bunch of ammo," Guinn said.