Feature
Arts & Craft (Creative Play)
Young at art Arts & crafts products have been the saviour of many a household during the past couple of years, and companies have used the soaring popularity of creative play to their advantage, identifying trends and play patterns that are set to keep this traditional category way ahead of the curve. Rachael Simpson-Jones finds out more.
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lick through this (substantial) feature on Arts & Crafts and you’ll see just how varied this sprawling category has become. Options for today’s kids include traditional activities painting, colouring-in and dough modelling – alongside rather more ‘cutting edge’ activities such as stop-motion movie making, nail polish design and ice-cream making. Heck, you can even code a robot to draw pictures on your behalf, if you so wish. What hasn’t changed is the play pattern at the heart of all the products highlighted in this issue. Creative play is considered a vital part of learning and development – and kids absolutely love it. Of course, so do parents and caregivers: who hasn’t turned to this category on a rainy afternoon to entertain a bored child? It’s for this reason that the category has performed particularly well over the past couple of years, when a series of lockdowns drove grown-ups to seek out arts & crafts products like never before. Happily, as we’ve seen in other categories, this level of demand hasn’t slumped: indeed, the situation seems to have reignited a passion for creative play that is keeping sales healthy months after ‘Freedom Day’. “During the pandemic, the activities category saw
significant growth with parents looking for ways to connect with and entertain their kids with activities during lockdowns,” explains Hedley Barnes, SVP International, Spin Master Toys. “Per NPD, our Kinetic Sand brand secured the spot as the No.2 reusable compound property and continues to gain share within the category. This trajectory, while softened slightly, is continuing, with strong consumer interest benefiting the category.” Sarah Dayus, sales director at Great Gizmos, echoes Hedley’s sentiments, telling Toy World that sales ‘really took off’ during lockdown and are still strong even though things are much more back to normal. She adds: “Parents fell in love with these types of products over the last couple of years. After realising how fun and beneficial they are, they are now searching out other products in this category for their children. Children enjoy sitting at a table and making something they can be proud of, and parents really love getting involved too.” Craft Buddy, the company behind the hugely popular diamond-painting brand Crystal Art, has found that the addition of classic licences has broadened the appeal of its products to a much wider
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age-range. The company has amassed an impressive collection of properties in recent years - launches for the second half of this year include L.O.L. Surprise! and Star Wars Crystal Art products – and it’s seen particular success with Disney, as Andrew Welch, head of Marketing, details. “Licences help us reach an audience that we may not have otherwise, particularly those characters which have multi-generational appeal, like Disney and Peter Rabbit,” he says. “It’s interesting to note that some of our best-selling Disney lines have been classic properties – Winnie the Pooh, Bambi etc. – because these characters resonate deeply with the older crafters who also who buy our products. Our recent Peter Rabbit range of arts & craft products has been a hit with both an older and a younger audience.” By their very nature, Craft Buddy’s products lend themselves well to display, especially the larger canvasses, so it’s no surprise that Andrew says the type of artwork used for its Crystal Art and Paint By Numb3rs products has a ‘massive’ bearing on sales. He says: “Crystal Art and Paint By Numb3rs both lend themselves perfectly to the use of rich, detailed imagery. This is logical: our products tend to be
