V Is For Vtech, Vehicles, Verrecchia & Video Games – Toy Business A To Z

V Is For Vtech, Vehicles, Verrecchia & Video Games – Toy Business A To Z

VTECH

Vtech is a powerhouse in electronic learning toys, with a strong raft of products which keep coming back year after year with upgraded tech and refreshed versions of classic items like the Kidizoom camera and Kidizoom Watch products which have been top sellers. Originally founded back in 1976 by two entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, the company founded by Allan Wong and Stephen Leung is a global force. In 2016 the company strengthened its market position considerably with the acquisition of major rival Leapfrog.

VEHICLES

This is one of the often-forgotten powerhouses of the toy business. From generic toy cars, to Hot Wheels through to licensed products based on movies and TV shows the Vehicles category is a strong pillar of the toy business. The movie franchise ‘Cars’ clearly had a huge fit with the toy vehicles market and as such enjoyed huge success. But the potential for ‘Vehicles’ is huge – Star Wars for instance has such a huge universe of characters and means of transportation that the Vehicle toy options are huge. For children, the appeal is multi-faceted – they like the concept of speed and travelling fast, children also love to role play with objects, tasks and processes they see in everyday life, and kids tend to spend quite a lot of time in cars.

VERRECCHIA, AL

Al Verrecchia had a massive positive effect on Hasbro. Having worked for Hasbro for decades, he moved from CFO to CEO back in 2003 to steady the ship after the failure of Hasbro Interactive and expensive licensing deals caused concerns with the profitability of the company. His reign at Hasbro won’t go down in history as the most dynamic or most exciting, but his ‘Core brand’ focused strategy effectively and efficiently reset the company’s financials and laid the foundations for the more expansive and visionary strategy of the following CEO – Brian Goldner (RIP).

VIDEO GAMES

Today the Video Games industry is significantly bigger than the Toy business but looking back to the start of the Video game era, the start was alongside the toy industry. Back when technology was simpler, barriers to entry were not so huge, toy companies dabbled (and usually failed) in the world of gaming consoles. Both Mattel and Hasbro got major bloody noses from playing in this space – Hasbro Interactive had a run of success in the mid to late 1990s, but closed doors with major losses not too long later. Mattel lost a lot of money with The Learning Company at a similar time. Today the Video Games business is regularly spawning brands which are licensed to toy companies creating best sellers i.e. Minecraft, Fortnight & others. Additionally, Video Games historically have had a major impact on the Toy business when a new console launches, with the new consoles topping the ‘Wish lists’ of kids and therefore cannibalising some toy business. In recent times this negative impact of new console launches seems to have lessened, but either way, the Video Games business has a significant impact on the toy business.

We run a Consultancy business helping toy & games companies get ahead. For more information, check out www.KidsBrandInsight.com/services

We also run a Strategic Sourcing Consultancy advising toy & game companies around the world on their Sourcing strategies, reviewing their vendor base & suggesting improvements. To date our Sourcing services have saved our clients $tens of millions. For more information on how we can help, just go to: www.ToyTeamAsia.com

U Is For Unicorns, Upwords, Uncle Milton & Uno – Toy Business A To Z

U Is For Unicorns, Upwords, Uncle Milton & Uno – Toy Business A To Z

UNICORNS

The same perennial themes for toys have been resurfacing time after time for decades in the toy business. Unicorns is one of those perennial themes. After all, what is a unicorn but a super cutesy magical pony, and we all know how popular they are when turned into toys!

UPWORDS

Upwords has been a very successful board game since it first came on the scene in the early 1980s. By adding a 3d dimension to a Scrabble-esque word game, renowned games inventor Elliot Rudel brought a whole new twist to playing word games.

UNCLE MILTON

Uncle Milton toys is perhaps best known for their original ant farm toy product which was a massive hit back in the 1950s and 1960s. The company is also credited with introducing the spud gun to the market. The company has had a long influence on the toy business, and in 2017 the assets were purchased by The Bridge Direct & Tech 4 Kids. One other notable thing to note is that co-founder E. Joseph Cossman later wrote a best-selling book entitled ‘How I Made $1,000,000 Via Mail Order & You Can Too’.

UNO

UNO is a best-selling classic card game, which has been on sale since the early 1970s and has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. The game was invented by a Barber from Ohio called Merle Robbins, who fairly quickly sold his rights to International Games in return for $50,000 and a royalty on each game sold.

We run a Consultancy business helping toy & games companies get ahead. For more information, check out www.KidsBrandInsight.com/services

We also run a Strategic Sourcing Consultancy advising toy & game companies around the world on their Sourcing strategies, reviewing their vendor base & suggesting improvements. To date our Sourcing services have saved our clients $tens of millions. For more information on how we can help, just go to: www.ToyTeamAsia.com

T Is For Takara Tomy, Transformers, Target, Toys R Us, Twister & Teddy Bear

T Is For Takara Tomy, Transformers, Target, Toys R Us, Twister & Teddy Bear

TAKARA TOMY

Takara Tomy (known outside of Japan primarily as Tomy) is a powerhouse toy and entertainment company. Takara & Tomy were once competitors before a merger in the noughties brought them together. Tomy dates back to 1924, and Takara was founded in 1955. The company has a long-term relationship with Hasbro, helping to bring many Hasbro brands to the Japanese market. The company is also responsible for bringing some huge toy brands to market, including Bakugan, Beyblade & Transformers. Both within Japan and internationally, Takara Tomy is one of the global powerhouses of the toy business.

TRANSFORMERS Transformers has been WOWing new generations of kids ever since 1984 when it first appeared. The franchise is both a massive toy brand, as well as an entertainment behemoth. The Transformers movies have been gigantic, with 2 movies in the series grossing over $1bn, and with total box office takings in excess of $4.8bn, making it the 13th highest grossing movie franchise of all time. The characters are inspiring, intriguing and have the hugely toyetic feature of transforming from a robotic character into a car, a truck or some other vehicle or item. Transformers is not too far away from enjoying a 40th anniversary celebration, and the signs are that this mega brand will still be entertaining kids in another 40 years’ time.

TARGET

Target is one of the big 2 U.S. based mass market retailers who play a huge role in the toy business selling massive quantities of toys every year. Target began life back in the 1960s and has in the region of 1900 stores today. With total revenues (all product categories, not just toys!) in excess of $90 billion, Target’s importance to the toy business can’t be under-estimated. In recent years, Target.com has come to the fore as a major e-commerce player in the USA, ranking 60th most visited website in the USA at the time of writing this article.

TOYS ‘R’ US

Toys ‘R’ Us was the biggest and most iconic toy specialist retailer in the latter half of the 20th century after being founded in 1957. The company failed to keep up with the times in major markets like the USA & UK, and as such exited the numerous markets in 2018. There are still hundreds of TRU stores around the world though, with particular strength in Canada & Asia. Company mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe first appeared way back in the 1950s, and has fronted many an advertising campaign, with the most famous featuring the quote “There’s millions (of toys) says Geoffrey, all under one roof”.

TWISTER This classic active game reportedly sold more than 3m copies in the first year of launch back in 1966 and remains a top seller to this day. The game caused quite a stir when it was featured on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when the host and Eva Gabor played the game in such a way that the game was labelled by some as “sex in a box”!

THE TEDDY BEAR

The Teddy Bear is one of the most iconic but yet generic toys out there on the market. Named after the 26th U.S. President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, the President was on a hunting trip when members of his party trapped a bear, beat it & tied it to a tree before inviting Roosevelt to kill it. Teddy deemed this to be unsportsmanlike and refused leading to highly prominent political cartoons to feature the bear and Teddy, and from this a bright spark decided to produce a soft toy based on an ursine character called ‘Teddy’s bear’, and the rest as they say is history.

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