2016 was one of the best years for the toy industry ever. According to new data from NPD, the US toy market alone rose by 5% to a total of $20.4 billion.
What does this mean for the regular folk? It means that the toy industry is becoming more and more popular.
This in turn means even more toys and options out there. More so than ever in fact.
And there are two main reasons for the rise. On one hand we have Star Wars. Star Wars related toys are the single most popular brand in the US Sales. They total over $760 million in the US. That’s more than $60 from 2015.
Pokemon toys are the second reason. They have the highest growth year over year. Mostly due to the mobile game Pokemon Go. It motivated people to go out play and get Pokemon toys and stuffed animals.
So many toys, so little space and money
As always, the top toy category was Collectibles. This includes action figures, blind packs and so on. People particularly like the cheaper collectibles and buy more of them.
Stuffed animals also can go into this category. Usually they are the second most popular type of toy behind action figures. Then are the Outdoor and Sports toys and Games and puzzles. They all net hefty gains.
It’s interesting to note that this year there was a sizeable decrease in sales during the holiday season. That started from Thanksgiving and lasted to the week before Christmas. It seems that there were so many cool toys throughout the year, most people slowed down their spending during the holidays.
There’s another good reason. During 2016 there were so many toy-friendly movies. Among the top brands we find Trolls, Batman v Superman and Finding Dory. All of them had huge sales growths thanks to the movies. Interestingly, Captain America: Civil War is not here. Probably because there are so many movies from the Marvel universe so often, it’s hard to net a visible increase.
