Up until the end of 2016 everything was simply great in the world of toys. They were gaining more and more popularity which now seems to be gone.
Pretty much all toys were netting healthy jumps in sales. Over the past 3-4 months though, things seem to have drastically changed.
It’s normal that the first quarter of every year is the slowest in terms of sales and new products. That’s a tradition since everything has been exhausted during the Christmas season.
But sales seem to be plunging more than expected. Mattel announced that it’s sales for the first quarter of this year were down a whopping 15%. This brought the company back down to the levels of October 2015.
Mattel said the main reason is simple: parents aren’t buying kids new toys after Christmas. But it’s more than that. Sales of Barbie plunged 13%, Mega Bloks went down 38%, American Girl netted a 12% down.
Hasbro on the other hand seems to be doing better. It’s yet to announce results, but it’s expected that since the company makes a lot of Disney products, it will be above expectations.
But there seems to be somewhat of a problem somewhere. Somehow the excitement over new toys is not the same as it was a few months ago. Did people got tired of them? We don’t know. Maybe it’s part of the break the industry took. Most interesting toys will be coming to the market later in the year.
Some of them did gather quite a lot of attention during the London and New York Toy Fair events. So, maybe it’s a case of not enough cool toys at the moment? Maybe people are waiting for the cool stuff later in the year? We sure hope so.
