WowWee‘s Chief Technical Officer Davin Sufer discusses the YouTube-inspired toy trend and more in the Toy Book’s annual State of the Industry Q&A.

Some of the hottest toys last year were based on YouTube content and creators. Do you expect this trend to continue this year?
This is certainly the case moving forward. We continue to see these product lines grow and the link between content and product be critical to success. It’s exciting times because while the traditional licenses are still very much represented in the category (some would say dominant), there are several YouTube creators who have managed to break through and carve out their place in the product mix.

How does WowWee come up with new and innovative takes on existing lines to keep them fresh and exciting for consumers?
We look everywhere for inspiration. In fact, one of our challenges is that there are so many crazy, innovative, and new play patterns to try. Over the course of a given week, we are typically looking at dozens of ideas coming in from content creators, the inventor community, ideas we see online, and our own crazy ideas. It’s literally a never-ending barrage of amazing product concepts, play patterns, designs, characters, and content to consider. The “heavy lifting” on this front is assessing the ideas, sometimes building things very quickly so we can assess with actual prototypes and figure out if we are on to something. The key here is to stay true to our playful sides while being realistic about price points and how strong a given idea really is.


This State of the Industry Q&A response originally appeared in the February 2020 issue of the Toy Book. Click here to read more!

About the author

Maddie Michalik

Maddie Michalik

Maddie Michalik was the Editor-in-Chief of The Toy Book from 2020-2022. She was also a Senior Editor at The Toy Insider and The Pop Insider.

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