Steven has Hulk and He-Man action figures. Sometimes, after a bit of negotiation, he gets a shot of Peter’s Playstation. Between them the boys also have Lego, the internet, digital games and, of course, pens and paper vying for their attention. Sometimes Peter reads, or wrestles with his vast collection of Action Men. When it’s not raining, they can play outside with their see-saw, basketball hoop or football net.
Steven and Peter represent a sector of the toy market that has been studied, tested, marketed to, and in many ways expertly manipulated.
The man who decides how children like Steven and Peter are going to be spending their time – and their parents’ money – this Christmas doesn’t want to be named, but his job consists mainly of watching a lot of MTV, Nickelodeon and CBeebies, talking endlessly to children, monitoring youth culture in Japan and Australia and then turning his ideas into toys.
His aim as a toy developer is “to find what little time these kids have and make something to fit into it that they love”. It’s not exactly a secret profession, yet everyone close to toy development gets a wee bit nervous talking to the media. He admits: “It can seem a bit callous … toys are central to children’s lives but British parents are increasingly cynical about ‘new’ toys on the market. New sets of toys and games arrive fairly constantly. And kids really, really like to have what is new.”
Technology is very important to the toy developer, as are licensing opportunities from cartoons and youth-oriented TV shows. Anything that can be even tenuously tagged “educational” gets a thumbs up. Favourite “retro” characters – such as Miss Kitty, Elmo and the Cabbage Patch Kids (luridly ugly but, amazingly, tipped as this year’s Christmas must-have) – also get a big gold star of approval. The toy industry is one of the most fickle and fast-moving sectors of business anywhere and holds the potential for both huge riches and disastrous failure.
Last week the media clamoured over Barbie, perhaps the most iconic toy ever moulded, as she was cruelly booted out of the British top 10 Christmas toys for the first time since 1959. A new set of dolls, Bratz, are now flavour of the year with kids around the world.
Bratz (80 million now in circulation, scooping a 45% share of the UK fashion doll market) are foxy, gritty little symbols of seven to 12-year-old heaven – the dolls get a complete makeover every three months to follow catwalk fashion, have acres of cool merchandising to back them up, and come in every ethnic variation under the sun.
In 2003, the Bratz generated $2.3 billion for their creator Isaac Larian, who said: “They are everything Barbie is not. Who in Britain can identify with a six- foot-two blonde? The Bratz exist in a changing world – children today are exposed to change at a very fast pace, so the Bratz change too.” Larian sees his company MGA, the world’s largest private toy company, expanding the Bratz brand even further to keep up, adding: “In 10 years they will be something completely different.”
Just five years ago Larian and other major toy manufacturers feared for their future, worried they would fall victim to a trend of “kids growing older younger”. The toy industry was convinced that once the internet and technology-based games took over, more traditional toys would die.
“It was a huge concern that kids wouldn’t have the time or desire to play with toys any more,” said Ben Carter, news editor of Marketing Magazine. “The industry was very worried that technology and increasing demands on children’s time would drive them out of business.”
The “tween” market of seven to 12 year olds was the sector most toy manufacturers knew least about; children aspiring to be teenagers, who had mastered the art of pester power and had become aware of fashionable trends much earlier, were predicted to embrace the internet and gaming consoles and reject dolls, board games and sports equipment.
But the kids and the companies seem to have come to a compromise in the market.
“There is much more for kids to choose their toys from today, and the industry woke up and moved faster,’’ said Carter. “Technology has been integrated into a lot of toys very well, and so a wholesale dumping of what you would traditionally think of as toys was avoided.”
Music, fashion, culture and sport have become the new battlegrounds for toy development. The result, according to surveys carried out by researchers NPD, was a 5% growth in the UK toy market. Toy companies had reached the core of what makes children tick.
“Toy developers will start by mapping what a kid does in a day – school, homework, sports practice, TV and play time. They try to find an opening into that day where their product will fit, and focus groups hone the product down to something fashionable and hip,” said Reyne Rice, a coveted trend watcher with the Toy Industry Association in New York.
“These children are aspiring to what’s new, to be on top or ahead of the trend, and companies respond. They also have a lot more money to spend on toys than any generation before them.”
Scottish kids receive more pocket money than those living in any other part of the UK – £9.23 a week. The average amount rose by 23 times the rate of inflation between 2003 and 2004. Last year pester power persuaded tweens’ parents to shell out £330 per child on toys and games (not including bikes or video games), up from £279 in 2001.
Rice has noticed that parental determination to nurture any potential budding talent is creating a new wave of products and spending. “There was previously a niche market of toys aimed at children’s specific interests – singing, art, sport for example. But now there is a huge rush to get products out there that will make parents go “this will help my child with their passion”. Parents are choosing things for their kids that will be fun, but will also push them along and drive them to improve.”
This kind of trend is exactly what Hasbro, Mattel and Lego need to know about to get their latest toy to fly off the shelves. Predicting what a seven-year-old wants is never going to be an easy task, claims Professor Jeffrey Goldstein, an expert in the psychology of toys and play.
“Peer trends drive toy consumption, which is very frustrating for toy companies,” he said. “They have no control over whether skateboards will be cool tomorrow, or what Britney Spears is wearing. They spend a lot of time in seminars looking around and trying to catch the next trend, but fads for toys are driven by youth culture.”
Goldstein has mapped the change in toy-buying behaviour, as well as playing habits, across the world. He says that toys have been made to fit into changing family circumstances. “Demographics of having less brothers and sisters, parents who work, a perceived fear of playing outside on the streets, all add to them playing alone … so manufacturers moved towards that with computer games and board games for one person.
“But kids have social relationships with their toys – a favourite toy is a living thing to them, losing it would be like losing the family pet. Playing by themselves was seen as a big trend three or four years ago, now there is another move towards getting kids to play together and be more social.”
Goldstein is concerned that relentless advertising for toys – not just on TV but on the internet, cereal boxes and billboards – will have a poor effect on children’s development as they try to turn “I want” into “I’ve got”.
“When I look around the world I see a constant stream of advertising aimed at kids,” he said. “I’m worried because adults want to bury their heads in the sand and not educate their children about what advertising actually is – just like drugs and alcohol, kids should be able to make good choices about things that may be bad for them.”
The UK government has rejected calls to ban TV advertising aimed at children, unlike Sweden, which has strict limits about marketing to young people. In 2002, £220m was spent on advertising children’s products in the UK. Increasingly, according to Ben Carter of Marketing Magazine, these ads will not be on Saturday morning kids’ TV, but on E4, Living TV and Sky One, as toy giants try to persuade parents of the educational value of toys.
Even within the toy industry there is concern about turning children into consumers so early in their lives. Jeff Hurst, general manager of Canadian toy company LeapFrog, admits: “There is unease about the idea of kids growing older younger. None of us want to see them growing up quicker than they should, but society is moving that way.”
LeapFrog’s hand-held Leapster device, a £64.99 one-stop shop of e-books and games, is cool with the kids and popular with their parents, and will be one of the UK’s bestsellers this Christmas. It looks likely to take a top spot alongside RoboSapien, a 14-inch- tall humanoid robot designed by Nasa scientist and Beam robotics pioneer Mark Tilden.
RoboSapien has a programmable computer “brain” which enables it to speak “caveman”, fart, snore, and perform over 50 unusual and realistic movements at the touch of a button.
“Life has changed around generations,” said Hurst. “When I grew up it was me, a few toys, and my friends, but now seven and eight year olds are having a thought process about where they choose to shop. There’s fashion going on even with little kids.”
At Moons Toymaster shop in Newmarket, Val Stedham, former chair of the British Toy Retailers Association, says she believes parents are slowly realising that their child’s sudden hankering for a must-have toy is something to be cautious of.
“The parents I meet are researching toys before they buy, making clever choices and really thinking about what they are putting in front of their kids. Education is important to them, but so is fun.
“We live in a competitive society and parents want the edge over the next family. It is hard for mums and dads with so much choice out there, and I acknowledge even a little too much choice. But the word ‘no’ is, you know, there.”
1959: Barbie Every little girl dreamed of being blue-eyed and blonde and falling in love with Ken.
1977: Star Wars George Lucas cut his director’s fee in return for a merchandising percentage. Wise: 16% of US homes now have at least one Star Wars product.
1980: Rubik’s Cube Still the biggest-selling puzzle toy in history, Erno Rubik’s cube shifted over 100 million units.
1982: Cabbage Patch Kids
Huge demand caused mayhem in the US.
1995: Buzz Lightyear After Toy Story topped the box office, Christmas 1995 was a misery for parents who queued and pleaded for this iconic must-have of the 1990s.
1996: Tamagotchi T he Japanese keyring pets were a worldwide craze – like the Cabbage Patch Kids, they are trying for a comeback this year with the Tamagotchi Connection unit.
1999: Alien Egg Imported by Scottish firm H Grossman, it became a kids’ favourite after one was mistaken for a human foetus and rushed to hospital
2000: Tracy Island A BBC re-run of Thunderbirds prompted a sellout of 70,000 Tracy Island models and long waiting lists that were never filled.
2001: Bratz The start of the Bratz phenomenon saw the scary tweenies go straight to the top of the toy chart and stay there.
10 October 2004