Top Toy Trends for 2015
After going to the 2015 Toy Fair in NYC, I am overwhelmed by the amazing toys coming out on the market. As always, there was so much (almost too much) to see. However, based on what I did see, there seems to be a few toy trends across the board. These are my take aways of the “Top Trends 2015”, as well as the good and bad of each of them.
1. Pooping
Whether is it just bodily noises, or bodily by-products, there seems to be a toy fascination with poop. Not sure if the toy manufacturers are meeting poop demand or if they are trying to create crap happy people, but whether its pooping dogs or dogs that come with poop, or babies that eat their own poop, there was a lot of defecating going on.
2. Dinosaurs
After the fifth dinosaur toy, I wondered what is going on. Then I remembered that Jurassic Park is coming out in Summer of 2015, so they are expecting kids to roar over the destructive dinos. Of course, there is a lot of plush, and pint-size dinos, but I did like this walking dinosaur that you can see from my video here, and then this dinosaur sand toy that would be a fun for the summer. I like this category because they are classic toys that kids will love to play with – long after the movie comes out on DVD.
3. Interactive Toys
There has been a trend towards toys interacting with people (not in that creepy horror movie way…yet) by kids commanding the toy to do certain things. This year, it went a step further with two way conversations. Everything from talking to Barbie, or a conversational Dinosaur , kids can really start to engage and converse with their toys and the toys can engage and converse with the kids. The only parental problem I foresee is when the manufacturers forget that kids will still want to play with the toy when the battery needs to be charged. Many forgot the play value in the pursuit of WiFi. For example, it is fabulous that Barbie knows you like Bagels, but if Barbie can’t wear that high fashion couture dress that your 8 year old wants her to wear, even a dozen bagels won’t do the trick.
4. Mini-figures
Oh my goodness. I’ve never seen so many blind-packs and mini-figure collectibles. It goes well beyond Lego mini-figs, and it looks like almost every brand will have some sore of mini-figure category with exclusive pieces, limited editions and playsets to go along with them. I suppose it is good for us parents who often need those $1.99-$2.99 packs for little rewards, but the question is, how to store them? I didn’t see many manufactures that had solutions.
5. Feathers and Fins
Whether owls or jellyfish, parrots or turtles, there are a lot of things that will be going glub glub and tweet tweet. As an owner of two dogs, and as a parent to two kids, I am not sure I can handle more noise, but they are cute if you are into that sort of thing. Otherwise, I think I stick to my tweeting on Twitter. That provides me with enough headache.
The one trend I didn’t really see was Star Wars. There were definitely some toys out there, but I was expecting to be bombarded by it. I can’t say for sure, but I have a theory. You see, Star Wars is a Disney company, so I think most of the toys will be by Disney for the movie launch. Then other toy brands will come out with toys in 2016 if they can get the licenses for it. It is similar in concept to Frozen. Disney owned the Frozen Toy market at first, since only they knew what the movie entitled. So, the same can be deduced with Star Wars The Force Awakens. While there will be the Star Wars characters we know and love, there will be new ones, new machines, new worlds, new costumes, so we will have to wait until 2016 to see the full force.
So, all in all, for 2015, there will be a lot of hoots and toots in toys.
