As smartphone and tablet gaming has bloomed over the past couple of years, a lot of kids are graduating from Game Boys and picking up their parent's smartphone or tablet. Mattel's making its move to take its share of the new market with Apptivity, which are app-branded toy bundles for use on iPads. Let's take Fruit Ninja for example: when you use the Apptivity bundle with an updated version of the current app, a special multiplayer mode is unlocked that lets you use a Sensei toy (pictured above) with touch-sensitive contacts on the bottom to push fruits and bombs off a conveyor belt and into your competitor's area, (hopefully) catching them up and making them fail.

Mattel's taking the new line seriously: along with special bonus modes in Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, and Angry Birds (we're told the latter will see you playing as the pigs, not the birds), specially made games based on the Hot Wheels, The Dark Knight Rises, Barbie, Fisher-Price, WWE, and Monster High brands are in the hopper, too. Everything we saw at Toy Fair 2012 was still in prototype, though we did get to spend a bit of time with the Fruit Ninja accessory, and we have to say that the bonus mode in the game was pretty enjoyable — especially since the iPad's screen picked up on the Apptivity's inputs without a hitch. The only bundle with any availability info is the Hot Wheels one, which is slated for release in May for $19.99.