Toy Fair 2011 Goes to the Movies
The biggest toy industry event in the hemisphere is going down in New York City this week as toy creators, manufacturers and retailers gather to discover the next “must-have” toys for 2011 at the American International Toy Fair. According to the Toy Industry Association more than 1, 100 exhibitors will debut close to 100, 000 products for an audience of almost 30, 000 attendees and press.
Everything that fills the convention booths and showroom floors will eventually be for sale this year and make up a huge percentage of the projected $21.8 billion in domestic sales for the toy industry this year. Finding what’s truly interesting and cool amongst the rows and rows of product is daunting, but one tried and true trend was out in force again this year – media tie-in toys. Almost every major tent pole blockbuster from “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” to “Cars 2” was represented (some by multiple retailers) with toys for every age range.
With the economy just starting to turn around for retailers, the overall vibe from the products being shown off is that it’s still a conservative selling environment with the bulk of companies offering familiar variations on popular properties or products with stable price points. So instead of having multiple risky or experimental toy lines to launch, companies are instead offering only one or two eyebrow-raising items to test the waters like Hasbro’s My 3D glasses, renowned action figure manufacturer McFarlane Toys getting back into genre by launching a “The Walking Dead” line, or Mattel planning a classic “Back to the Future” line of figures.
However, it’s in the arena of media tie-ins that there actually is a lot of depth and breadth with toy products as companies are continuing to expand licenses with broad platform launches of major upcoming theatrical releases.
A prime example is Lego, who this year is creating brand new, licensed building play sets based on films such as “Star Wars, ” “Harry Potter, ” “Cars 2” and “Pirates of the Caribbean. ” Julie Stern, Brand Relations Manager for Lego, says building sets, expanded mini figures and now tie-in video games from film licenses are giving Lego continued strong sales. “We had a fantastic 2010, ” Stern says. ““Star Wars” is still huge for us, as was the “Toy Story” franchise. “Prince of Persia, ” everybody had doubts about, but the movie was great and the product sold great and we were excited to see that. Those were the first of Disney’s lines we’ve ever had, so it was great to see them do well. And now this year is the first time we have had “Pirates of the Caribbean. ” Regular pirates have been a Lego staple since 1989, but to have Jack Sparrow and the film characters is fabulous so we went back through all four of the movies focusing on the first movie and a lot of play sets for the new film. We also have the new Lego “Pirates of the Caribbean” video game coming out in May, which is the first time we have ever had a Disney property as a videogame. ”
On the opening day of Toy Fair, WSJ Speakeasy met with all of the major toy companies with media tie-in licenses and we tease some of the most interesting toy merchandising offerings for the movies coming to theaters this year.
For more interesting toys of note from this year’s American International Toy Fair, check out our slideshow in the tab.