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I've been covering toys for Good Housekeeping since 2018, so I've seen a lot of toy trends come and go. Usually, there's a hot animal of the moment. When I started here, all kids were obsessed with llamas and unicorns. That eventually faded, which left room for the rise of axolotls. But now, there's a new animal that's come to take the crown.The current animal grabbing the toy spotlight is: the cow! Cows are everywhere on toys this year. Often they're Highland cows, with a sweep of bangs in the front that makes them irresistible to children. But good old black-and-white Holsteins are out in full force too. When we surveyed the entries and tested toys for the Good Housekeeping Best Toy Awards this year, we had enough cows to fill a pasture. Several of them went on to become winners. The kids were into it. "My daughter loved playing with the furReal Maggie the Feed & Follow Cow," one mom of a four-year-old toy tester said. "She had it follow her everywhere and was able to play with it for hours with all the different things it does and says. She even started putting unused diapers we had on it and slept with it for nights." I can also attest that, at our in-person toy testing day at the Good Housekeeping Institute labs, everyone wanted to take a turn with Battat's Whacky Mooves, a farm-themed whack-a-mole-style game. With the manufacturer's age recommendation at two years old, it seems intended to be a toddler toy. But big kids and even some adults wanted to grab the mallet. And with that wide-eyed cow observing the game, who wouldn't want to try?Families also had fun trying out the Cows in Space game. For that one, players have to put on a headband with a magnetic UFO, then try to abduct small magnetic cows from a spinning pasture. "My son loved the space theme, and wearing the headband to play the game was fun," one parent tester said. Another reported that her kids kept going back to it, something they typically didn't do with games.Then there are the plushes—so many plushes. The Good Housekeeping toy team first noticed the cow trend at Toy Fair in the winter, where it seemed every booth that featured stuffed animals had a smiling cow out front.I wonder how long cows will be able to stay dominant. Already, I'm seeing capybaras closing in from behind, also available in stuffed form and in game form. (Or will the next one be the quokka?) They haven't reached the saturation level the way that cows have, though, so those cow toys won't be going out to pasture any time soon.