There are a few markers which signify that Christmas is well and truly on its way each year: the arrival of retailers’ festive ads, the first strains of Mariah Carey drifting out of a nearby radio (aaaargh) and for those of us in the toy community, the annual DreamToys PR event.
DreamToys has been a fixture in the toy media calendar for quite some time, but in recent years, there has been a feeling amongst toy companies that it needed freshening up a bit. To be fair, some of the challenges it has faced have been beyond everyone’s control – particularly the difficulty in getting camera crews to turn up en masse as they used to years ago. There’s nothing much anyone can do to rectify that, but there were other issues that needed addressing.
The good news is that the Toy World team spent the morning at DreamToys on Tuesday, and we found this year’s event a positive experience, with exhibitors happy with the new approach. The venue was more compact and the turnout was good, which helped to contribute to a lively atmosphere on the day. The stands were uniform, so the toys stood out a bit more this time round, regardless of whether or not someone had gone to town on their stand. The press release which accompanied the list was also a bit more focused on the toys themselves: last year, some exhibitors felt that talk about the rise of Kidults dominated the coverage, perhaps to the detriment of the toys on the list. Yes, we should undoubtedly be talking about the growth in Kidult purchases, but it feels like that should be a completely separate conversation to the DreamToys list, which predominantly features toys aimed squarely at kids.
Ultimately, of course, it’s all about the media coverage that follows the event, which has been encouraging so far – plenty of online and print coverage, as well as radio and some TV. Our Sales director Mark appeared on the BBC News channel on Thursday evening, giving a few thoughts on the list and the strong performance of toys so far this year. It’s perhaps the only time you will see the immortal caption “live from Hemel Hempstead” on the BBC this year.
There weren’t too many grumbles about the toys that made the list: there was apparently some debate about whether or not to include Labubu, but that was ruled out (quite rightly in my opinion). There are a couple of minor areas to look at for next year: because it was a small room, it was quite loud and often hard to hear anything – in particular, people with talking toys were complaining that it was hard to demonstrate them. But overall, the feeling was that DreamToys is very much back on track – so well done to Geoff Sheffield, Natasha Crookes, Paul Reader, Andrew Addley, Rosie Marshall and the new PR team, WPR.
Circana put out a release to coincide with DreamToys…
Read the rest here.
