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Stephen Prescott can thank G.I. Joe for getting him a job as a toy buyer.

Like many other North American kids during the 1980s, Prescott grew up fighting the evil Cobra Commander. But Prescott didn't just fight imaginary battles in his backyard. He became a serious collector of G.I. Joe memorabilia and other action toys.

Prescott continued his hobby right through college. One day, a small dot-com start-up selling action figures asked him to be part of a focus group.

Prescott knew the company because he had shopped there before. He also had applied there, although unsuccessfully. But being part of the focus group gave Prescott the opening he needed to get noticed. The company eventually hired him because he knew so much about their product.

"That was pretty much my number one qualification," says Prescott. His first job was writing small product descriptions. Within months, he had become the head of merchandising. "I was going to be an English teacher," he says.

How Prescott found his way into toy buying highlights an important rule all toy buyers must follow: they must know everything about the product that they are trying to put on store shelves. More importantly, they have to know what clients want.

This requires research -- a lot of research. Prescott says that he spends a good deal of time online where action figure collectors talk and meet with each other to figure out which products are popular and which are not.

Another way to spot trends is through extensive market research. Buyers try to quantify all the different factors that influence kids -- and adults -- when they go shopping for toys.

That, however, is not always possible because the factors are never the same. One kid may find one toy more interesting to play with than another kid. So toy manufacturers will often settle for products that have little play value, but appeal to a large audience. Those products are then heavily promoted through movies, videos and fast food restaurants to ensure high sales.

Some childhood educators say such toys do very little to help kids develop and learn as they are growing up. They want better, more education-oriented toys.

This relationship between toys and childhood development means that toy buyers have a great deal of influence over kids. They, after all, decide which toys kids get to play with.

Toy buyer Ray England has thought about these issues and has come up with his own way of dealing with them. He will not purchase toys that are heavily promoted or licensed through a large entertainment corporation. He says he bases his purchasing on design, quality of the material, and most importantly, play value.

"Toys should generally train and assist, through a play situation, basic and useful skills," he says. "It can't just be some fuzzy animal that chirps, and a week after paying $50, is no longer picked up anymore."

England entered the toy industry relatively late. He first pursued a career in urban and regional planning. He then started to work as a consultant on pipeline projects. But he eventually grew tired of crossing the vast distances of the North.

So he and his wife Ann decided to open a specialty store in 1977. It was certainly a radical career departure for England. But he and his wife were not entirely unprepared for it, because she had a background in early childhood education.

And England remembered the kind of toys he liked when he grew up during the 1940s and 1950s.

"My parents chose [toys] well. Although we didn't have a super number of toys, what we had were good toys." They included trains and constructions sets, items now considered old-fashioned. But there is still demand for old-fashioned items. And the Englands have turned it into a popular business.

Ironically, England still travels a lot, only this time his destinations include the toy fairs of New York, Tokyo and London. And going to a toy fair can be quite an experience.

"In New York, for example, if you wanted to see every exhibitor at the toy fair in the seven days that you were there, you would have one minute with each of them," he says.

England says a day at a big fair usually begins early in the morning and doesn't end until the evening. He says during that time, you are so busy that you rarely have time to eat. And the day doesn't end when the doors of the fair close. Hours of writing reports about toys that you have seen during the day follow.

"After the New York toy show, I went to visit some relatives in Florida where it was nice and quiet," England says. "I spent 14 days, eight hours a day, going through the material I had collected, writing assessments and making suggestions in respect to ordering quantities."

But there is no question that working as a toy buyer can be a lot of fun. Just ask Tanyth Gadon. She helps her store owner select and buy toys. And she says she constantly plays with the toys her store sells.

She does this partly to learn more about the toys. But deep down inside, she is still a child who loves to play with toys. And it was this love that brought her back to her current employer after a few years away.

"I thought, 'Gee, what is the job that made me the happiest, that I liked the most, that I got up in the morning, and I thought, hey, I'm really happy that I'm going there?' It was here."