BOSTON (AP) Toy guns, kiddie pools, hoverboards and backyard trampolines are among the playthings that made a consumer watchdog's annual list of hazardous summer toys.

BANGOR Comic and pop-culture has exploded over the past few years. It used to be, if you were from Maine, you'd have to travel to southern New England at the very least to attend a convention. But now there are several to choose from right in our own backyard.

NEW YORK From a preschool toy designed to teach pre-coding skills to a hands-on molecule-building set for older kids that works with an app, technology abounded at this year's Toy Fair.

The annual showcase of upcoming toys held recently in New York included a slew of tech-related products from the titans of the toy industry and tiny startups, all looking to attract increasingly tech-savvy kids.

Here are the highlights. Some of the toys are educational, while others are just kind of cool. All of them are set to go on sale this fall unless otherwise specified.

When you have kids, you accumulate a lot of stuff. Between the initial baby showers, the hand-me-downs, the impulse shopping and the ridiculous rate of growth, you will always have more crap in your house than you could possibly be using at any one time.

So what do you do with it? Thankfully, I know a few people who have done me the favor of getting pregnant and have taken a few items off my hands. Bless their hearts.

When a kid doesn't like peas or Brussels sprouts, no one is particularly surprised - there are many adults who dislike those strange mini-cabbages. But being able to forecast what a child will like or dislike is a skill on par with the predictive powers of Nostradamus. You just never know.

For instance, when we had that recent streak of hot weather, I thought it would be the perfect time to share popsicles with the kiddos. Who doesn't love a nice, cool, delicious treat on a hot, sunny day? 

I bought my 10-year-old nephew Twister for Christmas. Remember Twister? A game that includes a mat with circles of bright colors? Your spin determines on which circle you need to put your hands, feet whatever you can. The last person standing wins! Playing this with my niece and nephew has been a blast and a reminder of the best toys of days gone by. Twister was introduced in the late '60s and became a popular party game. It was the first game that made the players the actual game pieces. Sixty-five million of us have bent our bodies in unusual ways on Twister mats!

Playing with the kids is much less one-sided than it used to be. Games before usually consisted of me making faces, grabbing their hands or arms and forcing them into a round of paddy-cake or bouncing someone on a knee until giggles or spit-up happened. Now there is clapping. There is knocking things down. There are full-contact sports.

Two out of three are experimenting with cruising, and the third isn't far behind. My son enjoys the one-handed approach. Climb up to standing by using a piece of furniture, then casually look behind him to see how impressed I am with his incredible feats of skill and strength.

Of course, he also loves to pull himself up onto items that are less than stable - including, but not limited to, the wheeled toddler cruisers, the gliding rocker and his sisters.

Kids seem to come with more and more things. Forgive me, but I'm still wading through a colossal pile of new toys, books and clothes from the recent celebration.

Staying on top of the influx of items is a Sisyphean task. No sooner have you sorted out all the items that they should be wearing for the next three months than they've outgrown it all. If you're lucky, you have boxes of clothes somewhere that they fit into - otherwise you hope the weather is conducive to the diaper-only look for a few more weeks.

Then suddenly, you turn a corner. More sleep is happening all around. And the combination of sleep deprivation training and actually getting more sleep helps clarify your situation. You don't have to operate in panic mode. At least not all the time.