Consumer Insight - The

The changing world of play

Toys must fulfil multiple roles in family life now, so toy brands should diversify as much as possible, says Nick Richardson, CEO and founder of The Insights Family

The purposes that toys serve for kids and parents continues to grow every day. They are a form of self-expression, as kids can personalise certain aspects of toys and collect their favourites. Toys are a medium for education and parents are increasingly recognising the value of edutainment, with 11% of parents with kids aged three to nine in the UK doubting that schools are the best place for education.

Play is widely acknowledged as a wellbeing medium that helps kids, meeting the rising concern among both children and parents for both mental and physical health. Traditional toys are being integrated into the digital and gaming ecosystems as an extension of immersive augmented reality and VR technologies. Furthermore, 83% of parents across the markets that we cover agree that they would like their kids to occupy the online and offline worlds equally.

These factors show how the ‘one-size fits all’ approach is no longer functional, as toys continue to occupy a huge space in the family ecosystem, alongside the rise of digital hobbies. As we look to the future, there are huge opportunities for brands to maximise the different uses of toys.

Kids Insights data indicates a change among the toy preferences of kids in Europe. While in both Q2 2020 and Q2 2021 construction toys ranked as the top favourite toy category, this market share has decreased by -33% with kids aged six to nine over the past months. Moreover, soft toys have shown a -26% decrease in popularity in the past year; however they have also moved from third to second most popular toy type. This shows how children’s preferences are being more thinly spread across different toy categories. There has been a trend of kids buying toys with a collectable element, such as trading cards, with their own money. For regions where we have sufficient data, trading card purchases increased in 2021 compared with 2020 by kids aged six to 12 in France (+19%), Germany (+13%) and Canada (+3%). Specifically, this uptake in interest in trading cards began around September 2020, when children were beginning to return to school after various pandemic restrictions were eased and the school year began. This suggests a social aspect to trading cards and collectables, where friends can share their interest.

Naturally, collectables present a very advantageous set of opportunities with the world of licensed IPs. Curating sets of toys around well-known brands that already have loyal fanbases is a sure-fire way to increase brand advocacy - and also a way to cement brand partnerships. For example, POP! Funko product lines have successfully showcased the increasing demand for collectable ranges - spanning the worlds of gaming, music, film, food and TV; BTS, Pokémon, Harry Potter, McDonald’s and Marvel all feature in recent lines. When comparing 2021 to the previous year, for example, those kids who bought or planned to buy collectables in relation to their favourite TV show increased across all age ranges in Germany, particularly for tweens (+24%), younger teens (+33%) and older teens (+47%).

However, as we previously established, parents have also adjusted their expectations of play and what the activity should offer their children. Perhaps there is more to play than just fun. Certainly, the majority of parents surveyed by The Insights Family believe that this is the case, with only 7% believing it is about having fun only - the lowestranking criteria recorded in our data portal. On the market today, there’s a range of products seeking to unlock these other benefits for kids during playtime.

For example, 10% of India’s parent population (of parents surveyed in India between July and December 2021) prioritise science/maths skills the most when it comes to play-related benefits for their kids. Interestingly, younger parents are more likely to prioritise this, with Gen X parents almost twice as likely to list science/maths skills as the primary benefit derived from play when compared with Baby Boomers. This trend applies to the wider population too, with Millennial parents 10% more likely than Baby Boomers to prioritise this on a global scale (all data taken from parents surveyed in India between July and December 2021).

STEM toys are becoming essential to inspire the next generation of kids towards the field. In the US, children aged six to nine surveyed between July and December 2021 who play with these toys are 62% more likely to aspire to be a doctor when they’re older compared with the average kid their age, while being twice as likely to want to become a scientist. Similarly, US six-tonine-year-olds who report electronic and digital toys to be their favourite are more likely to aspire towards becoming engineers (+19%), and 16% more likely to pursue a career in IT/computing (data taken from July-December 2021).

With more IPs and content available to kids every day, it is key for toy brands to provide an offline touchpoint through which their young audience can engage with their favourite properties. Brands should diversify their product offering into many toy categories to engage the widest audience. This could mean an opportunity in the edutainment sector for kid-centric IPs to license toys and games with an educational element, giving children an opportunity to interact with their favourite characters in the offline space, while providing a distinct benefit that their parents can connect with.

The Insights Family is the global leader in kids, parents, and family market intelligence, providing real-time data on their attitudes, behaviour, and consumption patterns.

Kids Insights surveys 7,780 children every week aged three to 18. Parents Insights surveys more than 3,800 parents of children between the ages of one and 16 every week. Both services operate in 22 countries across six continents and in total survey more than 469,040 kids and 228,800 parents a year. This means that the company interviews a new family member somewhere in the world every 45 seconds.