High tech toys for toddlers. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Over the last few years an upstart company called Leapfrog, has leap frogged over a lot of competition in creating a best selling technology learning toy line called LeapPad. At the Fisher Price division of number one toy maker Mattel, they've taken notice. At the recent American International Toy Fair, Fisher Price President Neil Friedman announced the company will be coming out with its own similar line called Powertouch. He calls it..

"A product that has a technology that is superior to anything in the marketplace and certainly is easy and an advantage for a young child to do. Those are the kinds of things we look at when we bring something to market."

Leapfrog, in the meantime, is expanding the LeapPad line, adding devices that can teach children to write as well as read. About the competition, Company chairman Tom Kalinske says...

"Our understanding is they've copied our LeapPad technology with the difference being that you use your finger to make the pages talk to you. We think the difference between us and them is we start with education, we start with educators, and we know how to develop early reading skills with kids."

And Leapfrog itself is going after a whole new market... handheld games dominated by Nintendo's Gameboy. The company will be coming out with the Leapster handheld device... that unlike Nintendo, will focus on educational games. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.