During our recent visit to the Tokyopop offices in Los Angeles, we spoke to Vice President of Sales and Marketing Steve Kleckner, who told us of some of the ways Tokyopop plans to further expand its sales in 2003.

Wizards of the Coast is planning to release a D&D CMG this fall utilizing pre-painted plastic miniatures in starter sets and boosters.

Sabertooth Games has announced the Christmas 2003 release of its Lord of the Rings Tradeable Miniatures Game .

GAMA has released the general schedule for the GAMA Trade Show to be held March 17-20 at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, as well as a list of the seminars.

Score Entertainment has released details of its fifth national mall tour-- the twelve-week 'X-Treme Z Tour.'

Kenny Penman of Forbidden Planet International in the UK saw the ICv2 2002 Toy Awards, strongly disagreed with our choice of DC Direct as Toy Company of the Year, and offers this impassioned response.

While Hollywood studios and the motion picture industry are trumpeting the new box office record of $9.4 billion in 2002, the real story is that sales of DVDs and VHS tapes reached a total of $12.4 billion.

These awards are given as a way of reflecting on the events of the year and to draw some conclusions from them. We chose Jakks Pacific's acquisition of the Dragon Ball toy license as the Deal of the Year, and the divergent price trends in collectibles as the Phenomenon of the Year.

We chose DC Direct as the Toy Company of the Year and Beyblades as the Toy Product of the Year.

We chose the FUNimation/Four Kids distribution agreement as the deal of the year, and increasing TV exposure as the phenomenon of the year.