The toy industry is very flexible

Recently, the latest market tracking data released by NPD Group showed that in the first half of this year, the total sales of toys in the United States reached 11.4 billion US dollars, a slight increase of 2%. 8%. In January-April, the average price was US$11.17, a year-on-year increase of 7%. It can be seen that the inflation problem is still fermenting in May-June.

The epidemic has brought unexpectedly high growth to the toy industry in 2020-2021. On this basis, the first half of this year still achieved a 2% growth. Juli Lennett, U.S. toy industry consultant for The NPD Group, said: "Although the toy industry growth rate has fallen back to 2%, this is a good result, because of the 14 industries tracked by NPD, only 6 industries have achieved growth in the first half of this year, while the toy industry has achieved growth. It's one of those things that shows how resilient the U.S. toy industry is in times of economic uncertainty."

Four categories performed strongly

From the perspective of category performance, in the first half of this year, only four categories of "exploration & others", "plush", "building blocks" and "action dolls" have grown. Compared with January to April this year, the growth momentum of the "baby/preschool" category is insufficient, and sales have declined.

The growth of plush category continued to lead, soaring 43% in the first half of this year. Top sellers include Jazwares' Squishmallows, Moose Toys' Magic Mixies and Disney's various IP-derived plushies.

The increase was followed by the “Explore and Other” category with a 28% increase, mainly driven by trading cards for sports IPs such as MLB (Major League Baseball), NBA and NFL (Super Bowl).

The "action doll" category has grown by 12% driven by Funko Pop [Recently, Funko has newly appointed the head of the Far East region to prepare for the Asia-Pacific market]. Also selling well are spinoff dolls from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Jurassic World: Domination.

Finally, the building sets category grew 8%, driven by strong LEGO sales, with LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Creators and LEGO Technic all making the list.

Overall, the U.S. toy industry has added about 16 million new consumers since 2019, most of whom have become regulars, the NPD said.