Special Feature
Toy Fair Season
Toy Fair Season the future is wide open
The last two years have seen significant changes to the ways many of us have been used to working, and nowhere is this more evident than in the trade show arena. Toy Fair Season is changing, and based on a few interesting developments in recent weeks, there may be even bigger changes on the horizon. John Baulch reports…
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or decades, the traditional January/ February Toy Fair Season has followed a similar pattern; toy suppliers and retailers from across the globe traditionally descend on Hong Kong in the first week of January to kick things off, with trips to London, Nuremberg and New York following over the next six weeks. Unfortunately, that time-honoured calendar has been massively disrupted by the pandemic. Not a single toy trade show took place in 2021, and the likelihood of the shows returning in 2022 was a hot topic of discussion throughout the course of last year. From an early stage, it was apparent that the Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair would not be coming back in 2022: the zero-Covid strategy backed by the Hong Kong government sadly rendered international business travel impractical for all but the most
essential trips. However, throughout the fourth quarter of 2021, the organisers of all of the other main toy shows repeatedly made public statements claiming that their shows would be going ahead. Despite their assurances, the toy community grapevine had been buzzing for months with suggestions that some of the major buyers wouldn’t be attending certain shows, while the turn of the New Year heralded a flurry of rumours about high profile toy companies making the decision not to exhibit. In the end, the steady succession of companies withdrawing their support left the organisers of the Nuremberg and New York Toy Fairs with little choice but to call their shows off. Thankfully, the London Toy Fair was able to go ahead, and the show proved to be everything we hoped it would be…and more. We have covered the
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show extensively elsewhere in this issue, but it’s worth adding that with all the other shows cancelled, there was a welcome bonus this time round, as many international attendees came along, not just from all parts of Europe as we had perhaps anticipated, but from further afield too. I liked the tale of two South American visitors who couldn’t speak a word of English, who were so keen to see new ranges after the New York show was cancelled that they made the trip and relied on the international language of toys being enough. I gather there would have been even more international attendees if the Nuremberg show had been called off earlier; by the time it was confirmed, it was too late for visitors from places like Russia and other countries to obtain the necessary visas. It was also interesting to see some major announcements which would traditionally have been held back to
