Moneeba Baloch reveals the latest toy retail trends and how respondents to the NPD’s Consumer Panel are feeling about toy purchasing at the current time.

The coronavirus and resultant lockdown have had a huge impact on daily life in the UK over the last quarter, impacting health, the economy and shopping habits. It has also had a big impact on UK toy sales. Unlike our European neighbours (with the exception of Germany), the UK toy market is bucking the pandemic lockdown trend and the market has grown +3 % since January (YTD Wk18 in value) in contrast to the rest of Europe, where toy value sales as a whole are down -5% YTD Wk18. The growth in the UK is due to six supercategories which are revealed in the article, each having a high time investment and play value for the items within them.

In 2019, NPD’s Consumer Panel showed that, 38% of all toy sales were online. In the past few weeks, this proportion has inevitably been far higher, with the Specialist & Mixed channel evolving into mostly online sales, as the majority of brick and mortar stores in this channel are closed. Since lockdown, this channel has accounted for 75% of total toy sales and has grown by +11% YTD. In a recent study conducted by The NPD Group, results showed that 43% of UK consumers have either shopped for toys online more frequently, or at least the same, as pre-lockdown.

Read the full NPD article in the June issue of Toy World, here.