We’ve reached the halfway mark of 2022, but there has been a conspicuous absence of public-facing data released for U.S. toy industry performance this year.
The reality, as most in the industry are aware, is that the explosive growth of the past two years has finally stalled. Double-digit increases just aren’t sustainable in any industry and the pandemic-fueled toy industry success story of 2020 and 2021 was, frankly, an unexpected side effect. The toy industry is reactive, and some swift moves across the board positioned the industry to capitalize on a resurgence of play as families spent more time together.
Now we’re hitting normalization amid inflation.
According to a recent blog post by The NPD Group’s Frédérique Tutt, vice president, industry analyst, toys, global toy sales grew by just 1% in the first four months of this year. Compared to pre-pandemic, 2019 levels, sales are still up but overall unit sales are down 5% offset by a 7% increase in the average selling price, per NPD.
As noted in the 2022 Classic Play issue of the Toy Book: “fewer toys are being sold for more money.”
But the sky is not falling, so there’s no need to sound the panic alarm.
The past two years have been loaded with skewed numbers in every industry, and what goes up will most certainly come down … to an extent.
First quarter earnings season arrived alongside updated guidance and a very positive outlook for the back half of 2022. All of the publicly traded toy companies — Mattel, Hasbro, Funko, Spin Master, and Jakks Pacific — echoed each other in kicking off the year with a bang.
Looking ahead toward the holiday season and the inevitable reactive pivots ahead, one hot category to watch will be collectibles. Tutt notes that the category is still booming, with one out of every five toys sold globally in the first four months of the year considered to be a collectible.
And coming out of last month’s Licensing Expo, there will be no shortage of great collectibles in the pipeline for release in the months and years ahead.
