At Toy Fair, an interactive doll with heart

To play with Alphabet Annie, just touch her heart.

Annie and her six sister dolls, believed to be the first interactive dolls to use braille, make their debut at the International Toy Fair this week and next in New York City -- reflecting a trend by some toy makers to create cool toys that can be enjoyed by disabled kids right alongside their able-bodied peers.

"You touch her heart and she`ll touch yours," said Kevin Michaels, the inventor of Alphabet Annie and her interactive sisters, including Bilingual Betty and World-Wide Wendie.

Bilingual Betty`s repertoire includes English, Spanish, French, Italian or German. Wendie`s expertise is geography. There`s also Samantha Scholar and Samantha Cheerleader, so little girls will know it is OK to be smart and cute; Melissa Says, a doll that teaches eye-hand coordination, and Sleepy Sweetums, a bedtime friend.

"When the instructions say, `Touch the heart,` I want the little girl who is visually challenged to feel the outline of a heart," said Michaels, president and chief executive of Heart 2 Heart Toys, of Hong Kong.

The dolls, which will retail for about $19.99, are the products of a joint venture between Heart 2 Heart Toys and the Uneeda Doll, an 84-year-old, privately held doll company based in New York and Hong Kong. Both Heart 2 Heart, which Michaels started two years ago after working for other toy makers, and Uneeda are non-promotional toy companies. That means they lack the multimillion-dollar advertising and promotional budgets that a leader like Mattel puts behind its best-selling girlfriend Barbie or its rival Hasbro used to launch Poo-Chi, the robotic puppy.

Richard Flaxman, president of Uneeda Doll Co., told Reuters this line of dolls for ages 3 and up is "totally interactive with very long chips," with a capacity of about five minutes, so the child and her parents get a lot of play for the money.

"For the price point, I do not think there is anything out there like it," Flaxman said.

"There is a second level of play," Flaxman said. "These dolls have very sweet faces. They are very cuddly. This is a little baby doll you can take to bed with you."

So the doll`s design caters to a little girl`s desire to "be the mommy," Flaxman said. An added bonus: Each doll has brushable hair.

"The lack of cuddliness - that is what is partly wrong with the doll business today," he added.

Neither Flaxman nor Michaels was aware of any other interactive doll that uses braille.

Michaels, born in Blackpool, England, said his inspiration to create a doll that visually impaired girls and their sighted friends could both enjoy, came from watching the courage and tenacity of a blind high school classmate. He also drew on his own experience of wearing a black patch over one eye as a small child to correct "lazy eye" and prevent blindness, as well as his work with the Special Olympics.

The front of each doll`s costume features a bright red heart in the spot where you would expect the heart to be.

When you touch it, you feel the heart`s outline in the raised dots of braille, a printed language invented around 1820 by a young Frenchman named Louis Braille.

The idea to use braille dots to outline the heart came from the Braille Institute in Hong Kong, where the doll was tested with blind and visually impaired children, Michaels said.

Alphabet Annie, a perky blond with a lifelike face and a ponytail, is dressed in lime green leggings, high-top sneakers and a white fleece top. In addition to the heart, the front of Annie`s blouse has her game pad -- a grid consisting of the letters of the alphabet and numbers 1 through 4 (with regular print and braille), to let the child know she has four games to play.

"Hi, my name is Alphabet Annie," the doll says in a sweet voice when you touch her heart, and then invites you to practice saying your ABCs with her in a series of four games.

"Let us sing it together," Annie says. "I want to sing it my way," she adds, as a bluesy piano kicks in. "Hit it, girls!"

Then girls` voices join in: "We want to learn about our ABCs. Come on, Annie, would you teach us, please?"

Michaels wrote the script, the games and the original music for Alphabet Annie and her six sisters.

"It is about empowerment," said Michaels, who designed these dolls to give a child up to four tries to come up with the right answer. "There is no other interactive toy that gives you the chance to come up with four answers."

If a child guesses wrong, the doll, in one instance, says, "Whoops! That will not fly. Why don`t we give it another try?"

Flaxman and Michaels said the response from retail buyers was enthusiastic at toy fair presentations in Hong Kong and Dallas, where buyers for big chains such as Wal-Mart Stores and Toys `R Us often get their first look at new toys before New York City`s Toy Fair opens.

But no orders have been placed so far, although Michaels noted that some buyers wait to make their selections until after New York`s Toy Fair is over.

Barbara Cheadle, president of the National Organisation of Parents of Blind Children, a non-profit group with about 5,000 members nationwide, reacted with enthusiasm when she was asked about the idea behind Alphabet Annie and her sisters.

"Mind you, I have not seen the doll," Cheadle said. "But I love the concept."

The number of preschool children who are blind or visually impaired is "a low-incident population, and sadly enough, still under-reported," Cheadle said.

This new doll line "sends a good message" to all kids, in her opinion, "that braille is neat. You take that attitude over to blind children and that carries over to an acceptance of blind children as playmates."

Cheadle, the mother of a 22-year-old son who has low vision, and an 18-year-old daughter with normal sight, said she was not aware of any other dolls that use braille.

These new dolls, according to Cheadle, could enhance the campaign to teach braille to all children - in a parallel effort to the movement to teach sign language to all children.

The National Organisation of Parents of Blind Children publishes its own list of "Great Toys for Blind Kids" that includes magnetic letters with Braille and other items. The list can be found by going to the Web site of the National Federation of the Blind - http://www.nfb.org - and clicking on "What`s New."

The Toy Manufacturers of America, sponsor of the American International Toy Fair in New York, which officially opens Sunday and runs through next week, also has published a toy guide in collaboration with the American Foundation for the Blind.

All of the toys in the guide are commercially available -- such as Mattel`s Swing & Sing Angelica, based on the "Rugrats" character -- and are not specially produced for children with visual impairments, the TMA said. The guide, however, indicates whether a toy gives auditory cues or has other features that would enhance play for a child with a visual impairment and perhaps other disabilities as well, such as cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments or developmental disabilities.

To find this toy guide, go to the Web site - http://www.toy-tma.org - then click on industry and when that menu comes up, click again on publication/resources. The heading, "Guide To Toys For Children Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired," will pop up - and then it`s click and browse to your heart`s content.