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I Is For Innovation & Inventors – A To Z of The Toy Business

INNOVATION

If you look back at old toy catalogues or watch old toy adverts on YouTube, there is an awful lot of similarities between today’s toys and the toys of yesteryear. So much so in fact, that some people in the toy business focus more on sales and marketing spend than they do on innovation and genuinely trying to find something that hasn’t been done before.

What innovation does though is to create more compelling play experiences, and incremental sales opportunities.

Thinking about how innovation applies to the toy business, the most obvious example appears to be Furby. Your very own electronic furry pal, capable of interacting with children and of seemingly coming to life. But innovation is not always about whizzy technology.

An area of the toy business which was once unfashionable for major companies but which now drives the industry overall is pocket money and collectable toys. Before the global financial crisis of the late noughties, major toy companies tended to pooh-pooh selling toys at such low-price points, as it is so much harder to justify product development and marketing against lower priced products…that is unless the lower priced products sell in ridiculous quantities, which is what has been happening for some time now in this category. As such, the ability to deliver great play based on a much more limited spec has led to wave after wave of innovation from Shopkins through to L.O.L. Surprise!

INVENTORS

We can’t discuss innovation in the toy & game business without also talking about the mighty role of Inventors in our industry. Those outside the toy business don’t realise the critical role that independent inventors play. The fact that major toy & game companies have teams of Inventor Liaison staff shows just how important external concepts & ideas are in terms of feeding the everlasting churn of product development. With more than two thirds of toys being new on shelf each year, there is a huge volume of concepts needed. Inventing though isn’t a career path for the light-hearted, with many great concepts not finding their way to market, and royalty payments coming a long time after the original work was done by the inventors. We estimate though that there are around 100-200 full time toy & game inventors globally making a full time living from creating toy & game concepts…and after all there are certainly worse ways to earn a living!

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H Is For Hasbro & Hot Wheels – A To Z Of The Toy Industry

HASBRO is one of the giants of the toy business and has been for a long time. Not that many people though know that the first iteration of the company started life way back in 1923, when three brothers – Henry, Herman and Hillel – started the company then known as Hassenfeld Brothers. The company began by selling textile pieces, before developing the business into pencil cases and school supplies, and then setting up their own pencil manufacturing facility. The first toy products created were modelling clay and doctor/nurses’ outfits, and the company had effectively become a toy company by the 1940s.

Fast forward to today and Hasbro has a massive presence and impact across the toy business. The array of iconic brands they own or control is vast, including: Play-Doh, Monopoly, Transformers, My Little Pony, Nerf, Kenner, Tonka, Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Magic: The Gathering, Furby, Mr. Potato Head and we could go on (and on!).

Today Hasbro is much more than just a toy company – the Rhode Island headquartered business which started out selling textile odds and ends is now a global entertainment content powerhouse, with ongoing interests in movies, TV and other forms of video content.

HOT WHEELS is the major market leader in vehicle toys. Over 6 billion Hot Wheels die cast vehicles have been sold since Mattel first launched the brand back in 1968, with more than 800 models and over 11,000 variations of cars produced. Mattel co-founder Elliott Handler instigated Mattel’s move into this space after seeing his son playing with Matchbox cars. Despite the lack of enthusiasm of his wife and fellow co-founder of Mattel, Ruth Handler (most famous for her origination of Barbie), Elliott developed Hot Wheels in conjunction with Jack Ryan and the first Hot Wheels product line hit shelves in 1968. Hot Wheels enjoyed staggering success from launch. Today Hot Wheels is a massive toy brand, with brand extensions a plenty, from track sets to garages for cars, and much more. Hot Wheels is one of the most iconic and commercially successful toy brands of all time.

G Is For G.I. Joe, Giochi Preziosi & Gender

G.I Joe is the iconic toy which created the action figure category. And G.I. Joe has been a major presence in the toy business ever since it launched in 1964. Originally, toy executives were not convinced that boys (in the 1960s) would want to play with ‘Dolls’, and this perception led to the invention of the phrase ‘action figure’. An African American figure was introduced the following year, and over the years there have been many different iterations of the G.I. Joe brand. Movies based on the franchise released in 2009 and 2013 performed ok at the box office. Snake Eyes, a G.I. Joe spin-off is due to launch within 3 weeks of the publishing of this article. Generations of children (primarily boys, see GENDER section below!) have grown up playing with G.I. Joe, and the brand looks set to enjoy success in the future.

Giochi Preziosi – founded in 1978 in Italy by Enrico Preziosi, Giochi Preziosi is a powerhouse of the toy industry, especially in Southern Europe. The company owns brands including Gormiti (monster like figures) and Cicciobello dolls. Following on from the acquisition of UK toy company Flair Leisure back in 2008, recent acquisitions of Spanish toy company Famosa and Trudi (a Plush toy company) have increased the presence and power of the company. All those doing toy business in Europe will know that Giochi Preziosi is a company with substantial and growing presence.

Gender as a topic in relation to toys is a very contentious area these days. To try to explain this as succinctly as possible: rightly or wrongly over time toys have been used by parents to help children explain traditional gender roles. Historically speaking, these were perceived to be as follows: boys/men – aggressive, physical play to reflect aggressive, physical persona. Girls/women – a softer, more nurturing outlook. We aren’t going to get into why and how those traditional perspectives of gender roles are right or wrong, but what we can be sure of is that media and social perceptions of prescribed gender roles have changed massively over the last few decades. Toy stores once labelled aisles in store as ‘Boys’ or ‘Girls’, and some toy companies still report their business on these gender specific grounds. Today though the best approach for toy companies is to create toys which they feel the market wants, but without telling people that a particular toy is for one gender or another. That isn’t always easy, but therein lies the challenge for modern day toy people – we are trying to meet the needs of traditionalists and those who are more progressive and finding that balance is really hard. In more than a decade of writing articles on the toy business, this topic of gender and toys is the only one which has consistently delivered angry backlash, so for that reason we’re going to leave this one here for now!

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