• Time Warner reports US$16 billion loss in Q4 (MarketWatch)
• Borders drops more jobs (Business Week)
• Disney Interactive Studios sees US$45 million loss (GamesIndustry.biz)
• Can the latest Lego video game stand on its own without a license behind it? (Kotaku)
• Hasbro and Universal turn to Candy Land for the next toy-turned-movie treatment (Variety)
• Woolworths lives! Online, that is (BBC News)
• China posts healthy retail sales over Lunar New Year (International Herald Tribune/AP)
• CPSC defers lead testing mandate for toy manufacturers and retailers for another year (L.A. Times)
• Hands-free drawing – make Etch-A-Sketch-esque art using just a microphone and your voice (Neatorama)
• Disney-ABC Television slashes hundreds of jobs (L.A. Times)
• At last, a retail success story! Amazon sees Q4 profit and sales spike (Wall Street Journal)
• Tesco feels the pricing pressures of consumers (Reuters)
• Jakks Pacific recalls thousands of possibly explosive Spa Factory Aromatherapy kits (PR Newswire)
• Kung Fu Panda co-director to helm live-action He-Man film (Variety)
• Japanese retailers also bearing the brunt of economic downturn (Reuters)
• Human workers replaced by efficient robots at major retail warehouses (Wired)
• Twentieth Century Fox fills the Narnia void left by Disney (L.A. Times)
• Miley gets her own…stock index? (StockPickr)
• License this: The Triceracopter, a triceratops-shaped helicopter? (Gizmodo)
• Now you can fight Storm Troopers in the rain with these light saber umbrellas (Geekologie)
• Target the latest to reduce employees, cuts 9% of HQ staff (L.A. Times)
• Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book snags Newbery Medal (Washington Post)
• On the Gaiman front, here’s a look at the upcoming Coraline movie (MTV Movies)
• Finding other kid-friendly useful functions for the Nintendo Wii? (Kotaku)
• Celebrate your eleventy-first birthday with these Lord of the Rings-inspired cakes (Cake Wrecks)
• US retail sales continue to fall as consumers spend less (Bloomberg)
• UK high street sales also seeing sliding sales in January (BBC)
• Children’s books getting tested for lead, too (Washington Post)
• All chance and no strategy make for unchallenging kids board games (BoingBoing)
• Behind the ViewMaster: the creator and creation of the 3-D images (Neatorama)
• And now, some strange examples of gaming furniture (Web Urbanist)
• More bids tabled for struggling Entertainment Rights? (The Daily Telegraph)
• Lessons from Mary Poppins in these troubled times (BBC)
• McDonald’s looks to expand its golden arches through Europe (International Business Times)
• The debate of Brain Age‘s effectiveness (Kotaku)
• Video games outsold DVD and Blu-ray at retail around the world (Joystiq)
• Disney to merge ABC TV net and production arms (Wall Street Journal)
• The big toycos prep to conform to new safety laws while small businesses struggle (Bloomberg)
• Also on the toy front, India bans Chinese-imports without giving a reason (Reuters India)
• No White Knights galloping forth for failing retailers (Reuters)
• Are we even closer to the invisibility cloak? (Wired/GeekDad)