DTA 2013 Nominations are Open

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Clutter has announced that nominations for the 2013 Designer Toy Awards (DTAs) are now open.  This year Clutter has gone ahead and  pre-chosen a starting group of  nominees in nearly all the categories as a way of reducing the odds that a particularly worthy person or toy is missed in the public nomination process. Nominations close on May 15th – so be quick if you want to nominate someone or something.    In addition to opening the nominations, Clutter has made several changes to the structure of the awards both in terms of the categories and the voting procedure.  We’re just going to summarize what we feel are they key changes – be sure to check out the official What’s Changed list for all the details. 

On the category side –  Toy of the Year finalists will be determined by voting in the other Best of categories – Best Vinyl, Best Plush, Best Sofubi, Best Resin (previously self-produced).  So the ‘Toy of the Year’ winner will be the  toy voted to be ‘best’ regardless of the medium, which seems like a good way to go.    

The other major change has to do with voting. In previous years, award categories were clearly split  between those voted on by fans and those voted by the DTA board members.  Now, fans will get a chance to  have their voice heard in every category.  For some categories (Best Blog, Best Toy Shop, Fan Favorite, etc), fan voting will determine both the finalists and the winner.  In the remaining categories, fan voting will determine 5 of the 9 finalists with the other four finalists determined by a DTA Nominating Committee.  The final voting in these categories (Best Vinyl, Best Resin, Best Plush, etc.) will be handled by the DTA board.  This means that compared to prior years,  the DTA board will have the final vote on a much larger number of categories.