It’s the time of year when everyone fixates on the weather (which thankfully looks good for the next few days) – it’s also a bit of a lull period for the toy market, the calm before the storm in many respects. On the plus side, that means I can get little tasks done like booking our hotel rooms for next year’s London Toy Fair and sorting out our flights to Nuremberg. The good news is that the Ryan Air schedulers haven’t made the same basic errors as they did last year, so if you are quick, there are direct flights to Nuremberg going out over the weekend and on the Monday, and returning on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The price has gone up quite a bit from the halcyon pre-pandemic days, but it does save a lot of faffing around with trains if you fly directly to Nuremberg (if you are close enough to Stansted to make it work).
As for the London Toy Fair, it was encouraging to report this week that re-bookings for the show are going incredibly well. The Ground Floor is already sold out, and there are only a few spaces left up in the gallery – so if you’re thinking about exhibiting next year, you should get your name down post haste. I would imagine it won’t be that long before we’ll be running a story announcing that the show is a sell-out.
As well as being quiet season, it’s also financial reporting season over in the US – albeit the second quarter is arguably the least interesting or revealing of all the toy financial quarters. Mattel was first out of the blocks with a solid set of results this week: Q2 sales were broadly in line with last year (which was a very good year for the company) and the bottom line is looking even healthier.
Hasbro’s results were a little different, although the headline 18% decline in revenue only actually equated to a 6% decline once you remove the eOne business from the numbers. And the best news of all is that Hasbro turned a profit in Q2, reversing the losses of Q2 2023.
To boost the noise around financial reporting, companies usually release choice nuggets about new products coming in the next quarter. In Mattel’s case, this saw a press release about the introduction of the first-ever Blind Barbie doll, as well as a black doll with Down Syndrome which is being added to the Fashionistas range. The Blind Barbie even made it on to the main BBC radio news headlines that morning – it’s no mean feat to achieve that sort of consumer media coverage for toys at this time of year.
Read the rest here.
