Toy World spoke to Paul Reader, chair of the DreamToys selection committee, and Natasha Crookes, director general of the Toy Retailers Association, to find out more about this year’s big changes.

The Great Hall at Goodenough College will play host to DreamToys 2023

One of the only things left unchanged for this year’s DreamToys is the month in which it takes place – November. The 7th and 8th of November, to be exact, with the first of the two days reserved for media and the official DreamToys list kept under strict embargo until day two. When it comes to the dates for the annual event, it’s very much of a case of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

So, onto the raft of changes made for DreamToys 2023. While the 2022 event was held at the Bastion offices in central London, this year’s takes place at Goodenough College in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury, central London. The main event will take place in the Grand Hall while smaller breakout rooms offer opportunities for interviews, filming or writing up stories. There will also be dedicated influencer areas, available only to carefully selected influencers who will arrive towards the end of the day, and an area for photographers requiring plain backdrops. The new venue also provides plenty of scope for those companies that made the list to create their own assets and PR communications against the festive backdrop of the fully-‘Christmassified’ Grand Hall.

Perhaps the biggest change is to the DreamToys list itself – readers can find out more by reading the full article here. In addition to the major overhaul of the list, Paul says: “We’ll be presenting the story behind each choice, which will create strong angles for media coverage and allow suppliers to push that message out to consumers in their own marketing.” Creating a story explaining each selection is a genius move, and an element some have felt has been lacking in recent years.

To find out how else DreamToys is shaking things up for 2023, and to take a look at its new logo, read the full article, published in the July 2023 issue of Toy World, here.