I hope you all had a splendid Bank Holiday weekend. We’ve officially reached the end of the summer holidays – kids return to school next week, although traffic on the roads has already felt heavier this week. Hopefully toy stores will have a bumper last weekend of the summer holidays – while some parents get organised nice and early, many are living hand to mouth and waiting for their latest pay cheque to hit their account before splashing out on back to school essentials.
Many toy retailers have expanded their product range to include the likes of stationery, backpacks and water bottles, all staples of the category. But with bag clips, key rings and collectibles very much in fashion, there are bound to be plenty of incremental opportunities for toy retailers to secure valuable sales over the weekend.
I passed The Entertainer store here in Hemel Hempstead on Wednesday lunchtime, and it looked busier than any weekday during the school holidays – I appreciate that is a very specific snapshot, but somehow I feel that the last week of the holidays might have been a good one in general for retailers. Toymaster told me recently that they’re trading up with most of their top 30 suppliers so far this year, so while no-one is pretending that retail is a stroll in the park right now, there are undoubtedly some encouraging signs if you look in the right places.
As the summer draws to a close and autumn looms large (I even spotted Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride lines prominently on display in Primark this week), we’re also approaching ‘top toys for Christmas list’ season. First up this week was Selfridges, with what might be described as an ‘eclectic’ mix of candidates. Like London buses, you wait for one top ten Xmas toys list and two turn up in quick succession… the following day it was the turn of John Lewis & Partners to unveil its predictions. There are already some ranges cropping up frequently in these lists (Sylvanian Families, Gui-Gui from Moose, Pokémon, Lego), and a few frontrunners are emerging as likely candidates for this year’s DreamToys list.
As we announced at the end of last week, there’s a new PR heading up DreamToys this year. We also revealed details about this year’s event and the changes that have been implemented to the format – this year will see a multi-purpose pop-up venue created in Soho to unveil the list to content creators and press over the course of a week. The venue will feature a display of all of the toys on the first floor, with break out space and individual demo plinths for each of the featured toys downstairs. It has also been decided that the list will feature 15 toys this year, to help deliver maximum exposure to the selected items. I think most people would agree that it was time for a change in approach, so it will be interesting to see if the new activation is a success.
Read the rest here.
