Toy exhibitors all hoping to be this year's big craze

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Leading article: Toy story

Last year it was pogo sticks. This year's youth craze may well be football cards bearing pictures of pieces of unwashed Manchester United players' shirts and used boots.

At Toy Fair 2002, a trade exhibition held at ExCel in Docklands, east London, toy manufacturers were all hoping that their product was going to be the one to capture the nation's children.

The football trading cards, made by Upper Deck, have been on limited sale for the past two weeks, with some already fetching more than £100 on internet auction sites. The packs of eight cards, which cost £1.99, go on general sale this week. The accompanying marketing fanfare could spawn a wave of plundered piggy banks, playground fisticuffs and exasperated parents.

There are 135 regular cards to collect. Matchworn shirt cards can be found in one in every 48 packs, and come from the backs of 13 players. Slices of three players' boots have been incorporated in 25 cards.

There are also various autographed cards. The rarest is David Beckham's signed gold card, of which there are seven. Upper Deck, the American manufacturer and world leader in trading cards, is offering £2,000 to anyone who finds one ­ and wishes to part with it.

Nico Blauw, Upper Deck's European divisional business manager, predicted "The cards are going to sell like crazy."

The company has seen success in America with similar cards devoted to baseball, basketball and American football. They are also popular in Japan. The company may feature other teams if the cards sell well.

Football-inspired games are expected to do well this year as interest mounts for the World Cup. Next to Mr Blauw's stand was one devoted to FlipFootball, a card game that pits Manchester United against Roughburn Rovers. Costing £12.99, it includes a CD with pro and anti United chants.

Another playground craze is expected to be spinning tops, in particular the BeyBlade by Hasbro, voted Japan's number one toy at the World Hobby Fair in Tokyo. Thousands of Japanese children still get excited each time a new top is launched. .

Children can customise their own tops using interchangeable parts ­ the attack ring, the weight disk, the spin gear and the blade base. The skill is in trying to predict the best combination to ensure your top hits your rival's top out of an arena or be the last one standing. The winner can then claim the losing top's plastic collectable disc. The tops cost £5.99, but no child will be satisfied with just one. Many buy the entire range of more than 20.

Parents despairing at the lack of exercise their teenagers take will find no solace in the fact that another new craze is an electric scooter with a seat. The Dart Plus will be launched in April at £169 by the Scottish manufacturer H Grossman, with a top speed of 10mph.

Last year, the UK toy market grew by 7 per cent. Traditional toys, including dolls, action figures, toy vehicles and activity toys such as arts and crafts and building sets, experienced the biggest growth across the industry.

Meanwhile, Bionicles, remote-controlled fighting robots, scooped the Toy of the Year award at a ceremony last night. The set of crab-like creatures with interchangeable masks made by Lego won the prize at the awards dinner of the British Association of Toy Retailers at Planet 2000 in Shoreditch, east London.

The winner of the best girls' toy was a doll whose features can be painted on by its owner.

Craft of the year was a candy floss maker; Craze of the year was the pogo stick, an award jointly won by three different manufacturers ­ Halsal, Grossman and LB Group.

One of the strongest winners was in the pre-school category, an electronic educational toy called LeapPad, by LeapFrog.