Having arrived back from a lovely holiday in Crete earlier this week, it seems like the seasons changed while we were away – summer is well and truly over and the countdown to Christmas is now very much on. While I was relaxing on a sunbed doing absolutely nothing for a week, the Toy World team was frantically busy pulling our October issue into shape, attending several key events and running a series of Breaking News stories to keep the toy community (and me) up to date with all the latest developments.
Smyths and The Entertainer both released their predictions for top-selling Christmas toys within 24 hours of each other (and just 48 hours after the Dream Toys committee met to deliberate what would make this year’s list). Looking at all of the top toy lists unveiled so far, a pattern is emerging, with a general consensus beginning to form around a dozen or so products that are widely being tipped for festive success by retailers.
In addition to these hotly-tipped lines, I am sure a variety of other candidates will emerge over the coming weeks – long gone are the days when the Christmas best-sellers could be comfortably identified at the January trade shows. Nowadays, even the lists complied in early September are not guaranteed to be wholly complete and accurate – there is often a curveball or two waiting in the wings to disrupt the status quo. But that’s just one of the reasons we love the toy market – there’s always something new and exciting just around the corner.
I also missed the Licensing Awards, which saw Wow! Stuff’s Richard North pick up the prestigious Honorary Achievement Award. Richard joins a select band of winners and is arguably the first-ever recipient to come from the mainstream toy community (Rainbow Designs’ Anthony Temple and HTI’s Richard Hollis are amongst previous winners, and while they have enjoyed long, illustrious careers in the toy market, both also held senior positions for many years in the licensing business). I gather Richard North went AWOL a few minutes before his award was due to be presented, but thankfully he was located just in time before an urgent search party was sent out. Of course, he had no idea what was about to happen, and even when they started sharing some anecdotes and stories about him, it took a few minutes for the penny to drop. Anyway, great to see a ‘toy boy’ picking up the honour, and hopefully he will be the first of many.
Out in the big wide world, perhaps the most bizarre news of last week was the suggestion by President Trump that he would be writing a cheque for $5000 (does anyone still write cheques?!) to each US citizen if the Republicans win both houses in the November mid-term elections. Yes, you read that correctly – the US President now appears to be offering bribes to the electorate in return for votes. I am not sure where the $1.3 trillion dollars will come from, or how that will ever pass Congress, but as an election slogan – “Vote for me, here’s $5k” is certainly… different. Of course, it won’t happen but think of the potential bounce in consumer sales if it did.
Read the rest here.
