I have found a company, The Insights People, which provides extensive and up in the moment surveys of what products and brands children desire. I find that, whereas N.P.D. provides history, the Insights People reports are more concurrent and predictive.
Through their website, Kids Insights, the Insights People provide data for eleven countries: United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India, Canada, Mexico, and Australia. The company surveys 275,000 children every year, providing a 99% statistical significance (https://hbr.org/2016/02/a-refresher-on-statistical-significance)
Although there were numerous US and international surveys to choose from, I wanted to know what American children wanted for Christmas. To find out, I chose a Kids Insights survey of 6,520 American boys and girls aged three to twelve. The survey was completed on October 29.
The question asked was: What new toy would you like to own? In response, the children listed a total of 100 products. We did a review of all 100 products. Here are our findings:
- The top ten items on the list were:
| Answer | Actual | Percentage | Company |
| LEGO | 459 | 6.9 | LEGO |
| LOL Dolls | 271 | 4.1 | MGA |
| Barbie | 230 | 3.5 | MATTEL |
| Cars | 113 | 1.7 | MATTEL |
| NERF toys | 107 | 1.6 | HASBRO |
| American Girl Dolls | 73 | 1.1 | MATTEL |
| Nintendo Switch | 75 | 1.1 | NON-TOY |
| PlayStation | 73 | 1.1 | NON-TOY |
| Frozen Toys | 68 | 1 | HASBRO |
| PAW Patrol Toys | 66 | 1 | SPIN MASTER |
- Mattel listed 14 out of 100 items on the full list. Their share amounted to 9.9% of all toys wanted.
- Hasbro had double the number of items that Mattel listed, 28, but a lower percentage of all wants, 8.5%.
- Lego products receive 7.5%, while MGA and Spin Master received 4.8% and 2.8% of the wants.
- Non-Toys (products that NPD does not count as toys) had 25 items on the list, and 9.6% of the wants.
- PlayStation 5 and Xbox X Series were not released until November, yet PlayStation and Nintendo are already in the top 10.
- I keep hearing that Paw Patrol is in decline, yet it still made the top ten.
- Frozen, even though there is no movie this year, has turned into an evergreen brand.
- Though seemingly in decline in the last few years, American Girl dolls are still a desirable toy.
- A relatively limited number of movie tie-in products made the list. Only 3.7% of the children were interested in movie tie-in toys. . Does this mean that there is little carry over excitement for a movie tie-in product if there is not a current movie in the theaters?
- As a category, action figures were the 74th most requested toy out of the 100 toys “wants.” Part of the problem may be the lack of action movie releases in 2020. The category received only 0.1% of mentions.
- Hasbro had twice the number of “wants” that Mattel received, yet Mattel received a much higher percentage of children requesting their products. The number of wants compared to the rate of requests raises the question, at least at this time, are some Hasbro brands getting tired.
This kind of research is invaluable in better understanding of what children don’t have and want now. Kids Insights is an excellent method of predicting the future.
