LOS ANGELES — Toy Quest has carved out a niche by quashing two myths of its $21 billion-a-year industry: Older children aren't interested in toys, and parents aren't interested in spending a lot of money on playthings.

Now, after selling hundreds of thousands of $100-plus toys for children 8 and older, the Los Angeles-based company has to figure out a way to keep enticing that age group as last year's must-haves get left at the bottom of the toy box.

"We want to bring these kids back," said Toy Quest founder and President Brian Dubinsky. "We're not going to bring them back with Little Tikes or action figures. We're going to bring them back with cool robotics and electronics."

The approach, he said, is to offer preteens a bridge between traditional toys and the more grown-up electronics they will soon aspire to own. And a key to those plans is Rip Roar, the company's new electronics brand for 8-to-12-year-olds. This fall, Toy Quest will release the first products in the line: child-friendly MP3 players and video players.

The company's past successes, with toys such as Bonzai Falls giant water slides and Minimoto electric motorcycles, don't guarantee loyalty from the most fickle of consumers.

"If somebody comes up with a good idea, like Razor scooters, it doesn't mean that the next thing they think of is going to be anywhere near as successful," said Sean McGowan, a toy industry analyst with Harris Nesbitt in New York. "That's the elusive part, coming up with a formula or systematizing what they do that is different than everybody else."

But as a small, privately held company, Toy Quest is able to move quickly and take the kinds of risks that bigger companies don't.

"They've done a real good job the last few years, and they've also filled voids," said Jim Silver, editor of consumer magazine Toy Wishes. "Risks are very expensive. Many companies try to keep doing what they're doing, maybe expand a little bit on the line with product extensions. But in today's world, you have to take a risk if you want to make strides."

Because they are designed with preteens in mind, the Rip Roar offerings don't require credit cards or use of the family computer.

Toy Quest's MP3 Free, for $99, is a player the size of a cigarette lighter that docks onto a CD player to record music, no downloading required.

Video Free, which will set parents back $179, is what you might get if a 10-year-old crossed a digital video recorder with Apple Computer Inc.'s video iPod. The shiny red-and-silver rectangle records five hours of television — captured from the TV itself — for free, portable viewing. "TiVo to go," Dubinsky calls it.

Silver, a longtime influential market watcher, says he is eager to see how the items will do — particularly among younger preteens, who aren't quite ready for the grown-up versions sought after by older siblings.

For its part, Toy Quest is pinning its prospects on a fundamental if underappreciated fact: Children are not miniature adults, even if their toys are sometimes miniature versions of what adults get to "play" with.

The company also is producing two high-tech musical instruments licensed by multimedia troupe Blue Man Group. The keyboard and percussion toys, which will sell for about $75, operate as standard electronic instruments.

But they also allow children to play along with music from MP3 players or other sources, and to add instruments or tempo changes by waving their hands in front of the tubes that adorn the product for a part disc jockey, part magician, part dancer experience.

Toy Quest first reached older children with Tekno the Robotic Dog, which walked and talked its way into being one of the hottest gift items of 2001. Before Tekno, Toy Quest's revenue was about $40 million a year; with Tekno, sales hit $180 million.

In the years that followed, Toy Quest knew it wanted to go after the age group that other companies wrote off or couldn't figure out.

There were plenty of failures: Banks and flashlights based on the movie "Small Soldiers" tanked. A radio-controlled car with a water-jet "turbo" function failed to make a splash. And interactive TV games with an embedded camera that put the player on the screen never garnered a following.

Things started to turn around in 2003, when the company introduced its Bonzai Falls water slides, the centerpiece of which is a 12-foot-tall, 19-foot-long inflatable slide that is to the old 1970s Slip n' Slide what a Razor scooter is to a wooden plank and wheels. The line last year had nearly $500 million in retail sales, Dubinsky said.