The eToys IPO did not open until after noon on Thursday. It made up for its late start by soaring as high as $85 in its opening minutes of trading after pricing at $20 a share.

Although selling pressure pared the price back to $72 in the late afternoon, the stock rebounded to close at $76.56, up $56.56, or 283 percent, from its offering price.

A total of 8.2 million shares, floated by Goldman Sachs, raised $164 million for the Santa Monica, California-based eToys.

STAGE PARENTFueling eToys's rise, perhaps, was the unusual issuance of a research report on the day of the IPO.

Typically, investment banks wait several weeks after an IPO before issuing a report and a buy recommendation. But Chris Vroom, Internet analyst with newly formed investment firm Thomas Weisel Partners, felt a pressing need to issue a research report on the day of the IPO that gave eToys a Strong Buy.

"The reason that we chose to put out coverage so quickly was we thought there was an opportunity to give the impression of how big this company could be," says Mr. Vroom. "The message is that eToys is going to be a $10 billion company over the next 10 years ... with the ability to produce over a billion in operating income."

The company, like many of the recent Net IPOs, appears to fit into the formula that has been generating success. This recipe includes a powerful brand name, a leading position in a vertical market, and backing from a high-profile investment bank.

Today's new-issue market underscored this trend. Of the two IPOs underwritten into Thursday's trading, both were Internet companies. But eToys, a leading e-commerce seller of children's products, jumped 300 percent, while the other IPO of the day, broadband services provider CAIS Internet, closed at $22.13 a share after being priced at $19 -- a gain of just 16.45 percent.

Bear Stearns, the underwriter for Theglobe.com -- the highest-gaining first-day IPO in history -- underwrote 6.0 million shares of CAIS stock. The Washington, D.C.-based company provides telephone lines to apartments and hotels with, among other products, access to the Internet.

GOLDMAN TOUCHThe eToys offering was another in a series of Goldman Sachs IPOs that landed in Redherring.com's IPO Hall of Fame, a list of new offerings with first-day gains of 100 percent or more.

Take a look at the IPOs in which Goldman Sachs has been involved this year alone. iVillage was priced at $24 and opened at $95.88 a share on March 19. Then there's TheStreet.com, which opened trading on May 11 at $59 a share, up from its initial offering price of $19, for a gain of 210 percent.

Check out pcOrder.com, which opened at $55.25 a share, up from its February 24 price of $21, or Portal Software, which opened trading on May 6 at $36 a share, more than double the IPO price of $14.

As stellar as these performances have been, they say on Wall Street, "You're only as good as your last trade." So what's next for Goldman Sachs?

On tap for next week is Barnesandnoble.com, a wildly anticipated IPO that is ready to play in eToys's -- and Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) - sandbox.