NPD Insight
Characters and themes drive sales 2022 Toy Market Highlights
The UK market is currently -8% but there are some highlights in key areas
This month, Rory highlights the areas of the UK toy market that are enjoying 30%2022, identifying the+34% a successful strongest IPs and themes in the market.
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Spider-Man, Batman and Jurassic Park, all showing 022 is proving to be another challenging year double digit growth. There are also IPs from TV and for the UK toy market, the latest YTD May Licensing Plush streaming services, with Bluey, Themes CoComelon and data shows the value trend at -8% for the Miraculous all featuring in the top growth licences. year, while the month of May was -7%. There Around a third of all toys value Strong themes in 2022 The standout of area featuring The other prominently in the list of are several external factors influencing the category is licensed so far in 2022. dogs, 2022 with top growth licencesinclude is Videosuperheroes, Games; Among Us is in market, including rising costs across a number of Squishmallows Movies are driving growth too. andthe fairies. the top growth property the No.8in spot for growthponies and Sonic Hedgehog at areas, impacting consumer spending. Thankfully,
toys
2022 Toy Market Highlights
Source: The NPD Group |Retail Tracking Service | UK | YTD May-22
Document classification: Client/Third Party Confidential
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The NPD Group, L.P. | Proprietary and confidential
The UK market is currently -8% but there are some highlights in key areas
30%
+34%
Licensing
Plush
Themes
Around a third of all toys value is licensed so far in 2022. Movies are driving growth too.
The standout category of 2022 with Squishmallows the top growth property in toys
Strong themes in 2022 include superheroes, dogs, ponies and fairies.
thereThe are still some success stories within the data, NPD Group, L.P. | Proprietary and confidential including some very positive trends in licensing and encouraging growth in several categories. Digging a little deeper into the data helps us understand what is driving these trends.
Document classification: Client/Third Party Confidential
The first area to highlight is licensing. YTD May data reveals that licensing is accounting for nearly a third of all toy value, up two percentage points from the same period in 2021. One factor behind this performance is the fact that sales are coming from a wide variety of genres and properties. The list of top 10 growth licences includes movie related properties such as
Source: The NPD Group |Retail Tracking Service | UK | YTD May-22
No.10. Looking at subclasses reinforces the current 1 strength of licensing: Traditional Plush is the top growth subclass in toys, having gained over £9m so far this year, with just under £2m of this increase coming from licensed product. Action Figure Collectibles is the second best performing subclass, having gained nearly £2m this year. Licensing accounts for 85% of the subclass and has added £3.6m. As mentioned already, the Plush supercategory is enjoying ongoing success, driven by strong growth in Traditional Plush, with a +38% trend so far this year. One particular property that seems to have captured
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Rory Partis
Director UK Toys & EuroToys NPD the interest of kids this year is Squishmallows; the property has been the top growth property in the entire market so far in 2022, adding nearly £5m already. With all of that value in the Traditional Plush subclass, it represents around half of the growth here. The key area of success for Squishmallows is primarily at the under £20 price point, which accounts for just under 80% of all value. However, the brand’s growth has been helped by moving into higher price points too. In 2021, only around 2% of overall value was over £20, but that has now moved to over 20% of value, adding £1.5m to the brand. It’s not all about Squishmallows in Plush though as Ty, Peppa Pig and CoComelon also make up some of the top growth properties. As well as licences, the growth in different types of themes is an area of the UK toy market that possibly doesn’t get the exposure it should. This can be anything from Superheroes through to Fairies and Princesses. It can be useful to look at the data in this way to understand trends in the market and to assess whether growth is coming from any unexpected areas. The top growth theme currently is Superheroes, which isn’t a huge surprise given the strong performance from both Marvel and DC in recent months. The next best placed theme is dogs, with both Bluey and Hey Duggee figuring prominently. Dogs as a theme is three times higher in value as Cats and has added ten times as much vs. 2021. Other themes that are growing in 2022 include Dinosaurs, driven by Jurassic World, whilst Fairies and Ponies are adding value too. There are clearly more challenges to come in 2022, but it is also important to celebrate the successes. Considering the number of different areas that have been highlighted in this article, I believe there is genuine cause for optimism for the rest of the year, particularly in licensing. With a strong summer movie schedule still to come, we could see licensed merchandise’s 30% share of the toy market climb even higher by the end of the year.
