Timothy Smith is picking up some Spanish from the toys he plays with. The Texas tot's parents want him to grow up with two languages.

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Like lots of toddlers, 2-year-old Timothy Smith routinely plays with toys that teach him to sing tunes, repeat simple words and count to 10.

That's how he learned that the wet stuff in his bathtub is called "agua."

Timothy's parents want him to grow up speaking English and Spanish, and appreciating his Hispanic roots. And they're relying on bilingual toys to help.

"I'm Hispanic, and my husband speaks mostly English," said Timothy's mother, Reace Alvarenga-Smith. "We try to seek out bilingual toys, because the dominant language in our home, unfortunately, is English."

The Arlington, Texas, family doesn't have to search very hard these days.

From colorful, counting maracas to huggable, talking bears, bilingual playthings have become increasingly popular as retailers and manufacturers tap the burgeoning Hispanic market.

In fact, Toys "R" Us cited bilingual products as being among the biggest trends of last Christmas' toy-buying season.

Industry insiders trace the growth largely to the popularity of several animated TV characters: Nick Jr.'s Dora the Explorer, a 7-year-old, problem-solving, Latina adventurer; her animal-loving cousin, Diego; and Maya and Miguel, the 10-year-old twins at the center of a PBS show.

Although the cartoon celebrities have a spate of products on store shelves, toy makers also have introduced an array of other items to appeal to Hispanic families and to English-speaking parents who want to add a few words of Spanish to their children's vocabularies.

"I think that parents want their kids to have a bilingual edge," said Adrienne Citrin, a spokeswoman for the Toy Industry Association. "Kids under 5 — their brains are like sponges. They can really pick up that language quicker."

For the toy business, bilingual products have taken off along with Hispanics' economic clout. Hispanics account for almost 15 percent of U.S. residents, according to the Pew Hispanic Center's most recent data.

"There is certainly more of an awareness on the part of retailers that the Hispanic market is a very large market, a growing market," said Carol Fenster, an owner of Miami-based Baby Abuelita Productions.

Fenster's company launched its first products in May 2005 with the introduction of its Abuelita Rosa and Abuelito Pancho dolls. The dolls quickly won coveted shelf space at several large retail stores, and 60,000 dolls were bought last year, she said.

The dolls — white-haired grandparents who sing traditional Spanish lullabies — initially raised eyebrows from some buyers who questioned whether children would be drawn to the elderly characters. But Fenster and her partners insisted that the dolls would hit their target.

"Because of the role that grandparents play in Hispanic culture, it seemed to kind of make sense," Fenster said. "These are products that, I think, Hispanic-Americans can really identify and connect with — as opposed to products that can just be translated into Spanish."

Educational toys that simply expose youngsters to Spanish have proved popular too, especially for younger children who aren't yet in school, said Rick Muraski, the executive vice president who oversees the toy division at Chicco USA.

Chicco, which created its first bilingual toy four years ago, now sells four such talking toys and has more in the works for later this year, he said.

"It's an introduction," Muraski said. "It's your basic numbers, your basic letters, basic words in both languages — just to give a baby, basically, a feel for another language."

Although statistics aren't available on overall sales of bilingual toys, the toy association's Citrin said the products are expected to become ubiquitous.

"We're positive it's going to continue to grow," she said. "Everything from the large companies to the small companies are kind of jumping on the bandwagon."