One way to know what is going to be hot is to look at what people are searching for online.
Google’s trend-spotting tool predicted that Zhu Zhu Pets were going to be popular last year, according to CNNMoney.com, and they were. So this year, retailers are watching for the hot trends months ahead of the shopping season.
CNNMoney.com says a few items have popped out of the deck already:
“In toys, rising searches for Hasbro’s Nerf Stampede are up over 1,700% over the past 30 days. Hasbro unveiled its Nerf N-Strike Stampede Blaster for sale earlier this month, which is the toymaker’s latest version of its popular Nerf dart blasters.
“Searches for rival toymaker Mattel’s Sing-a-Ma-Jigs have doubled since July. These are a set of four colorful small plush toys that sing when you press their tummies. They also harmonize their voices with you press all of them together.”
There are some other items to watch. People are searching for “rare” or “vintage” Silly Bandz and Iwako erasers from Japan. Also, Flip video cameras still are popular. You can filter the results by country, state and even zoom down to metro areas.
