The business of selling toys to your inner child

As adults view childhood toys as collectibles for nostalgia, convenience or value, they have inspired a nickname in the toy industry: kids. This market has come of age during the pandemic as many Americans seek to reduce stress and reconnect with their old lives, becoming a key driver of new sales of everything from games to trading cards. Some of the country’s biggest toy companies are trying to keep up with that pace with new products, e-commerce sites and marketing.

In the year Those 18 and older accounted for 14 percent of U.S. toy industry sales in the 12-month period, up from $5.6 billion in 2019, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc., up 9 percent from 2019. 26%, 12 to 17 year old customers are second highest. The most popular items for older consumers were building sets (think Legos), traditional plush (think stuffed animals) and action figures (think Star Wars and Marvel characters).

Toy executives and analysts view this period differently than other nostalgia purchases. Instead of stacking unopened figurines on a shelf, adults actively engage with toys, stuffed animals, and toy tools that many have previously put away after childhood. Children’s preferences also have wider social acceptance, they say. In the year According to a survey of 2,000 adults by the US Toy Association in 2021, more than 50% of adults purchased toys and games for personal use.

Susan Newman, a 34-year-old financial advisor, has a collection of American Girl dolls and is a member of online communities dedicated to them. Ms. Newman, who lives in the Hamptons area of ​​Virginia, said she feels like a trendsetter.

“I see people in retirement, ‘Gosh, I wish I had…’ and I don’t live like that. I’m going to live the way I want,” she says.

This past week, McDonald’s found a similar set of shoppers by introducing a new Happy Meal for adults. His Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a limited-time collaboration with fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market, the designer worn by musicians such as Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.

There’s a 10-piece order of chicken nuggets or a Big Mac and medium fries with a medium drink in a golden-handled box. Each comes with one of four figurines featuring a modified old-school McDonald’s mascot Grimace, Hamburger, Birdie or a new character named Buddy the Cactus. The initiative has its own line of merchandise, including tees and hats.

Susan Newman, a 34-year-old financial consultant who has a collection of American Girl dolls, said she is planning an American Girl-themed bachelorette party. She also has a Disney castle made of Legos in her living room.

“If nostalgia helps us be more authentic and relevant, we’ll approach it,” said Tariq Hasan, who oversees marketing and customer experience for McDonald’s USA.

Some of the world’s biggest toy companies are playing to this new audience by creating adult-only e-commerce portals. One is Hasbro. Inc.,

Making everything from Nerf, Play-Doh and My Little Pony to Power Rangers, Dungeons and Dragons and Marvel and Star Wars figures. Now Hasbro has a site dedicated to adults called Pulse that sells exclusive toy lines and pitches ideas for new ones, promising to produce when a potential product meets a certain threshold.

Since launching the site in 2018, Hasbro has built about a dozen products from ideas on Pulse, and some of those products have had more than 25,000 fans. Recent creations include the $400 Ghostbusters Plasma Series Spengler’s Proton Pack, the ghost-fighting weapon used in the Ghostbuster movies, the $350 Star Wars Razor Crest model spacesuit and the $180 Transformers Victory Saber action figure.

Kwamina Crankson, who runs the Pulse platform, said most of the customers she spoke to weren’t trying to make a profit by reselling the toys – they were buying them for their own enjoyment. “Some of these items people have been waiting their whole lives for and want to pack up when they arrive,” Ms Crankson said.

Hundreds of thousands of consumers have bought toys from the site, Mr. Crankson said, making the platform one of the company’s biggest growth spots. Sales rose 69 percent in the first half of this year.

Another kid-related brand, Build-A-Bear, relies on older customers who want to design their own stuffed animals at some of the company’s retail locations around the country.

“Adult birthday parties, wedding showers and corporate events are becoming a bigger part of the company,” said CEO Sharon Price John. Cloud software giant Salesforce recently at a conference Inc.,

For example, Build-A-Bear and Salesforce said their employees were able to outfit their bears with company-branded merchandise. Teens, teens and adults now account for 40% of sales, Ms. Price said, up from about 25% when John joined the company eight years ago.

Last year, Build-A-Bear also launched an 18-and-over e-commerce site called Bear Cave, where adult shoppers can order items like a werewolf boxer wearing shorts or a “bring on the bubble” bunny holding a bottle. Rose. Bear’s Den purchases can only occur online to avoid confusion with gifts for kids in stores.

However, adults are still around 500 in the company. One afternoon in Manhattan, Evelyn Aguilar, 29, waited in line at the Build-A-Bear flagship store to create a Pokemon named Grouki and a classic bear she named New York. Ms. Aguilar, a hairstylist from Pottsville, Pa., completed the traditional Build-A-Bear heart ceremony in which she swung a heart bearing bear on her head and made a birth certificate for each of her animals.

“When I was a kid, all I wanted was a Tower-A-Bear, and now I have it,” she said, adding that she has about 50 stuffed animals.

In the year Adults are the new focus for American Girl, a company that began in 1986 making dolls and books depicting young girls from American history. When the company re-released the first six American Girl dolls in their original outfits in May 2021, about half had grown into adults who bought them for themselves, said Jamie Sigilman, Mattel’s senior vice president in charge of American Girl. The company reached its conclusion after conducting a survey of nearly 1,800 customers.

Ms. Saigilman is taking various steps to reach this older audience. She helped plan adult-only product launches for new collections, including a travel bag line with lifestyle brand Stoney Clover Lane. For spring, American Girl has teamed up with fashion brand LoveShackFancy to release floral apparel in doll, kid and adult sizes ranging from $24 for an 18-inch doll to $385 for adults.

The company recently revamped the menus at its five full-service in-store restaurants across the country, which now offer fewer chicken nuggets and more light bites, as well as a stronger cocktail list. In June, cafes added margaritas and Aperol spritzes for summer, as well as additional wine selections.

Ms. Saigilman attributes some of the surge in demand among savvy consumers to social media. Videos tagged “American Girl Doll” have a total of 361 million views on TikTok. Many show adults and their dolls in matching clothes.

The backstories the company creates for each doll have spawned Internet memes with people dreaming up their own characters: “We need an American Girl doll who…” One, showing a doll holding a bag of shredded cheese, read: “We want an American Girl doll who eats cheese out of the bag with her hand.”

Kelsey Silvera, 27, and Marley Stokes, 25, recently visited the American Girl store in New York City for a real tribute to their childhood. The women weren’t expecting to buy anything, but each one in Columbia, SC.

“It was a crazy coincidence that we both got those,” says Ms. Stokes, a pageant coach.

Ms. Newman, a 34-year-old financial consultant and American toy collector, visited a cafe in New York City to celebrate by picking out a wedding dress at a roadside bridal shop so she could have mimosas with a friend. . Beside her, a doll sat in a small chair on the table, a small plate and a coffee cup gathered in front of her.

Mrs. Newman says she’s throwing a bachelorette party for an American woman. Not all of her bridesmaids are their own American daughters, “but they don’t have to worry because I have seven,” she joked.

Ms. Saigilman, the company’s president, said American Girl has only scratched the surface of future plans to attract a more mature audience to the store. A few months ago, she saw the progress firsthand while having lunch at a New York City cafe. She said she saw three different grown women celebrating birthdays with dolls, no children to be seen.

Older customers “have a way of finding what they want,” she says.

–Jacob Gallagher contributed to this article.