After Toys R Us announced it’s closing down, many thought this is going to wreak havoc on the toy sales and industry as a whole. New data from NPD Group says that’s not really the case. Instead, toy sales are going up.
Meanwhile top brands like Spin Master continue to net drops. The company has nearly 14% drop of income due to the Toys R Us debt.
As a whole though, the US toy sales are up. And they have been climbing up from the start of 2018. The growth is accelerating, reaching 13% for the first 14 weeks of the year. Even after NPD took out the Easter toy sales, the market is up.
So, which are the toys that people like the most? NPD data shows that the fastest-growing categories in the first 14 weeks of 2018 included Youth Electronics (led by WowWee’s Fingerlings), Dolls (led by MGA Entertainment’s L.O.L. Surprise!, pictured) and All Other Toys (thanks to slow-rise ranges like Soft’n Slo Squishies, Smooshy Mushy and Squish-Dee-Lish), Kidscreen reports.
It seems that the toy industry is quickly finding new ways to live without Toys R Us. Or maybe the bump in sales is coming from the mass discount sales at Toys R Us. NPD thinks is the former. Even earlier this year the company predicted that the Toys R Us closure won’t effect the toy industry as dramatically as expected.
The reason is the same as to why Toys R Us is closing down in the first place. More and more people buy toys online. And other stores put in great effort to attract more customers from Toys R Us.
