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interests / alt.toys.transformers / The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

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* The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner ChildCodigo Postal
+* Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner ChildJoseph Bardsley
|`* Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner ChildCodigo Postal
| `- Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner ChildZobovor
`- Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner ChildZobovor

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The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

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Subject: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child
From: codigopo...@gmail.com (Codigo Postal)
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 by: Codigo Postal - Tue, 11 Oct 2022 02:56 UTC

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-business-of-selling-toys-to-your-inner-child-11665201646

The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

From American Girl to Build-A-Bear, companies that cater to children are tailoring more products and marketing around adult consumers who want toys for themselves
By Rachel Wolfe Photographs by Pat Jarrett for The Wall Street Journal
Oct. 8, 2022 12:00 am ET
Mattel Inc.’s American Girl now has new adult cocktails at its in-store cafes and grown-up dresses that mimic outfits worn by its dolls. Lego A/S has more than 100 sets designed specifically for adults. Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., which lets kids design their own teddy bears, has a line of racy stuffed animals only for customers 18 and over. Even McDonald’s Corp. is now serving adult Happy Meals. (Yes, you get a toy.)
Grown-ups have long looked to childhood playthings for nostalgia, comfort or value as collectibles, inspiring a nickname within the toy industry: kidults. This market came of age during the pandemic as many Americans looked to reconnect with their past as a way of reducing stress, becoming a key driver of new sales of everything from games to trading cards. Some of the country’s biggest toy companies are now trying to build on that momentum with new products, e-commerce sites and marketing.
People aged 18 and up accounted for 14% of U.S. toy industry sales for the 12-month period ended June 30, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc.., up from 9% in 2019. The $5.6 billion in sales to this group was up 26%, the second-biggest rise after customers aged 12 to 17. The most popular items for older consumers were building sets (think Legos), traditional plush (think stuffed animals) and action figures (think Star Wars and Marvel characters).

Customers can have a burger and martini at one of American Girl’s in-store restaurants.
PHOTO: AMERICAN GIRL
Toy executives and analysts see this moment differently than other periods of nostalgia-based buying. Instead of stashing figurines unopened on a shelf, adults are actively engaging with the dolls, stuffed animals and toy weapons many had previously put away after childhood. There is also broader social acceptance of kidult preferences, they say. A 2021 survey of 2,000 adults by the U.S. Toy Association found that more than 50% of adults bought toys and games for their own use.
Susan Newman, a 34-year-old financial adviser, has a collection of American Girl dolls and is a member of online communities dedicated to them. Ms. Newman, who lives in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, says she feels like a trendsetter.
“I see people in retirement who are like, ‘Gosh, I wish I had done…’ and I don’t live that way. I’m going to live like I want to,” she says.
This past week McDonald’s reached out to a similar set of buyers with the introduction of a new Happy Meal for adults. Its Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a limited-time collaboration with fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market, a designer worn by musicians such as Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.
Inside the golden-handled box is either a 10-piece chicken nugget order or a Big Mac plus medium fries with a medium drink. Each also comes with one of four figurines depicting altered versions of old-school McDonald’s mascots Grimace, the Hamburglar, Birdie or a new character called Cactus Buddy. The initiative has its own line of merchandise, including tees and hoodies.
“If nostalgia happens to help us be more authentic and relevant we’ll lean into it,” says Tariq Hassan, who oversees marketing and customer experience for McDonald’s USA.
Some of the world’s biggest toy companies are making a play for this emerging audience by creating adult-only e-commerce portals. One is Hasbro Inc., which makes everything from Nerf, Play-Doh and My Little Pony to Power Rangers, Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel and Star Wars action figures. It now has a site geared to adults called Hasbro Pulse that sells an exclusive lineup of toys and poses ideas for new ones, with a pledge to produce them once a potential product meets a certain threshold.

Susan Newman, right, and her sister, left, dressed up with the dolls when they were younger.
PHOTO: SUSAN NEWMAN
Since starting the site in 2018, Hasbro has built about a dozen products that started from an idea on Pulse, and some of these products had more than 25,000 backers. Recent creations include the $400 Ghostbusters Plasma Series Spengler’s Proton Pack, a wearable replica of the ghost-fighting weapon used in the Ghostbuster movies, a $350 Star Wars Razor Crest model spaceship and a $180 Transformers Victory Saber action figure.
Kwamina Crankson, who runs the Pulse platform, says most of the customers he’s spoken to aren’t planning to try to turn a profit on the toys by reselling them—they are buying them for their own enjoyment. “Some of those items people have been waiting their whole lives for it to exist and when it arrives, they want to unpack it,” Ms. Crankson says.
Hundreds of thousands of consumers have bought toys off the site, Mr. Crankson says, turning the platform into one of the biggest areas of growth for the company. Sales surged 69% in the first half of this year.
Another brand associated with children, Build-A-Bear, is increasingly reliant on older customers who want to design their own stuffed animals at some of the company’s retail locations across the country.
Adult birthday celebrations, wedding showers and corporate events are becoming a larger part of the company’s business, says Chief Executive Sharon Price John. At one recent summit for cloud software giant Salesforce Inc., for example, workers were able to dress their bears in company-branded merchandise, according to Build-A-Bear and Salesforce. Teens, tweens and adults now account for 40% of sales, Ms. Price John says, up from roughly 25% when she joined the company eight years ago.

Evelyn Aguilar, center, and her boyfriend Anthony Knabb visited a Build-A-Bear store in Manhattan, where Ms. Aguilar created a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York.
PHOTO: RACHEL WOLFE
Last year Build-A-Bear also launched an 18-and-over e-commerce site called the Bear Cave, where adult consumers can order items such as a werewolf wearing boxer briefs or a “bring on the bubbly” rabbit holding a bottle of rosé. Bear Cave purchases can only happen on the web, to avoid confusion with offerings for children in the stores.
Adults still show up at the company’s roughly 500 locations, however. On one recent afternoon in Manhattan, Evelyn Aguilar, 29, waited in line at the stuffing station of Build-A-Bear’s flagship store to create a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York. A hairstylist from Pottsville, Pa., Ms. Aguilar completed the traditional Build-A-Bear heart ceremony, where she had to wave a bear’s cushioned heart over her head, and made each of her stuffed animals a birth certificate.
“Really all I ever wanted as a kid was a Build-A-Bear, and now I have them,” she says, noting that she has about 50 stuffed animals back home.
Adults are also a newer focus for American Girl, a company that got its start in 1986 making dolls and books that depicted young girls living through different periods of American history. When the company rereleased the first six American Girl dolls in their original outfits in May 2021, roughly half went to grown-ups buying them for themselves, according to Jamie Cygielman, a Mattel senior vice president who is in charge of American Girl. The company came to that conclusion after conducting a survey of nearly 1,800 customers following the launch.
Ms. Cygielman is taking various steps to reach this older audience. She helped plan adult-only product launches for new collections, including a line of travel bags with lifestyle brand Stoney Clover Lane. In the spring, American Girl released a set of floral frocks in partnership with fashion brand LoveShackFancy that come in doll, kid and adult sizes, ranging from $24 for the 18-inch doll to $385 for grown-up sizes.

French braids on the hair of an American Girl doll owned by Susan Newman.
The company also recently revamped the menus at its five full-service in-store restaurants across the country, which now feature fewer chicken nuggets and more light bites, as well as a more-robust cocktail list. In June, the cafes added a margarita and Aperol Spritz for summer, as well as more wine choices.
Ms. Cygielman attributes some of the uptick in interest among adult consumers to social media. Videos tagged “American Girl Doll” have a collective 361 million views on TikTok. Many feature adults and their dolls in matching outfits.
The back stories the company creates for each doll has spawned internet memes from people dreaming up their own character traits using the format of “we need an American Girl Doll who…” One, showing a doll with a bag of shredded cheese, read: “We need an American Girl Doll who eats cheese out of the bag with her hand.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Which toys from childhood do you miss? Join the conversation below.
Kelsi Silveira, 27, and Marley Stokes, 25, recently visited an American Girl store in New York City as a lighthearted tribute to their childhood selves. The women didn’t expect to buy anything, but each ended up purchasing miniature stuffed dogs that resembled pets they owned back home in Columbia, S.C.
“It was just a crazy coincidence that we both found both of those,” says Ms. Stokes, a coach for beauty pageants.
Ms. Newman, the 34-year-old financial adviser who collects American Girl dolls, visited the cafe at the same New York City location so she could have mimosas with a friend to celebrate picking out a wedding dress at a bridal shop down the street. Next to her, a doll sat clipped to the table in a tiny chair with a miniature plate and coffee cup assembled in front of it.
Ms. Newman says she is planning an American Girl-themed bachelorette party. Not all of her bridesmaids have American Girls of their own, “but they don’t have to worry because I have seven,” she joked.
Ms. Cygielman, the company president, says American Girl has only scratched the surface of future plans to lure more mature audiences into the stores. She saw the progress firsthand while having lunch at the New York City cafe a few months ago. She says she saw three separate groups of adult women celebrating birthdays with their dolls, no kids in sight.
Older customers “have the means to be able to get what they want,” she says.
—Jacob Gallagher contributed to this article


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Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

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Subject: Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child
From: joe.bard...@gmail.com (Joseph Bardsley)
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 by: Joseph Bardsley - Wed, 12 Oct 2022 03:39 UTC

On Monday, October 10, 2022 at 7:56:58 PM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:
> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-business-of-selling-toys-to-your-inner-child-11665201646
>
> The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child
>
> From American Girl to Build-A-Bear, companies that cater to children are tailoring more products and marketing around adult consumers who want toys for themselves
> By Rachel Wolfe Photographs by Pat Jarrett for The Wall Street Journal
> Oct. 8, 2022 12:00 am ET
> Mattel Inc.’s American Girl now has new adult cocktails at its in-store cafes and grown-up dresses that mimic outfits worn by its dolls. Lego A/S has more than 100 sets designed specifically for adults. Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., which lets kids design their own teddy bears, has a line of racy stuffed animals only for customers 18 and over. Even McDonald’s Corp. is now serving adult Happy Meals. (Yes, you get a toy.)
> Grown-ups have long looked to childhood playthings for nostalgia, comfort or value as collectibles, inspiring a nickname within the toy industry: kidults. This market came of age during the pandemic as many Americans looked to reconnect with their past as a way of reducing stress, becoming a key driver of new sales of everything from games to trading cards. Some of the country’s biggest toy companies are now trying to build on that momentum with new products, e-commerce sites and marketing.
> People aged 18 and up accounted for 14% of U.S. toy industry sales for the 12-month period ended June 30, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc., up from 9% in 2019. The $5.6 billion in sales to this group was up 26%, the second-biggest rise after customers aged 12 to 17. The most popular items for older consumers were building sets (think Legos), traditional plush (think stuffed animals) and action figures (think Star Wars and Marvel characters).
>
> Customers can have a burger and martini at one of American Girl’s in-store restaurants.
> PHOTO: AMERICAN GIRL
> Toy executives and analysts see this moment differently than other periods of nostalgia-based buying. Instead of stashing figurines unopened on a shelf, adults are actively engaging with the dolls, stuffed animals and toy weapons many had previously put away after childhood. There is also broader social acceptance of kidult preferences, they say. A 2021 survey of 2,000 adults by the U.S. Toy Association found that more than 50% of adults bought toys and games for their own use.
> Susan Newman, a 34-year-old financial adviser, has a collection of American Girl dolls and is a member of online communities dedicated to them. Ms. Newman, who lives in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, says she feels like a trendsetter.
> “I see people in retirement who are like, ‘Gosh, I wish I had done…’ and I don’t live that way. I’m going to live like I want to,” she says.
> This past week McDonald’s reached out to a similar set of buyers with the introduction of a new Happy Meal for adults. Its Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a limited-time collaboration with fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market, a designer worn by musicians such as Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.
> Inside the golden-handled box is either a 10-piece chicken nugget order or a Big Mac plus medium fries with a medium drink. Each also comes with one of four figurines depicting altered versions of old-school McDonald’s mascots Grimace, the Hamburglar, Birdie or a new character called Cactus Buddy. The initiative has its own line of merchandise, including tees and hoodies.
> “If nostalgia happens to help us be more authentic and relevant we’ll lean into it,” says Tariq Hassan, who oversees marketing and customer experience for McDonald’s USA.
> Some of the world’s biggest toy companies are making a play for this emerging audience by creating adult-only e-commerce portals. One is Hasbro Inc., which makes everything from Nerf, Play-Doh and My Little Pony to Power Rangers, Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel and Star Wars action figures. It now has a site geared to adults called Hasbro Pulse that sells an exclusive lineup of toys and poses ideas for new ones, with a pledge to produce them once a potential product meets a certain threshold.
>
> Susan Newman, right, and her sister, left, dressed up with the dolls when they were younger.
> PHOTO: SUSAN NEWMAN
> Since starting the site in 2018, Hasbro has built about a dozen products that started from an idea on Pulse, and some of these products had more than 25,000 backers. Recent creations include the $400 Ghostbusters Plasma Series Spengler’s Proton Pack, a wearable replica of the ghost-fighting weapon used in the Ghostbuster movies, a $350 Star Wars Razor Crest model spaceship and a $180 Transformers Victory Saber action figure.
> Kwamina Crankson, who runs the Pulse platform, says most of the customers he’s spoken to aren’t planning to try to turn a profit on the toys by reselling them—they are buying them for their own enjoyment. “Some of those items people have been waiting their whole lives for it to exist and when it arrives, they want to unpack it,” Ms.. Crankson says.
> Hundreds of thousands of consumers have bought toys off the site, Mr. Crankson says, turning the platform into one of the biggest areas of growth for the company. Sales surged 69% in the first half of this year.
> Another brand associated with children, Build-A-Bear, is increasingly reliant on older customers who want to design their own stuffed animals at some of the company’s retail locations across the country.
> Adult birthday celebrations, wedding showers and corporate events are becoming a larger part of the company’s business, says Chief Executive Sharon Price John. At one recent summit for cloud software giant Salesforce Inc., for example, workers were able to dress their bears in company-branded merchandise, according to Build-A-Bear and Salesforce. Teens, tweens and adults now account for 40% of sales, Ms. Price John says, up from roughly 25% when she joined the company eight years ago.
>
> Evelyn Aguilar, center, and her boyfriend Anthony Knabb visited a Build-A-Bear store in Manhattan, where Ms. Aguilar created a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York.
> PHOTO: RACHEL WOLFE
> Last year Build-A-Bear also launched an 18-and-over e-commerce site called the Bear Cave, where adult consumers can order items such as a werewolf wearing boxer briefs or a “bring on the bubbly” rabbit holding a bottle of rosé. Bear Cave purchases can only happen on the web, to avoid confusion with offerings for children in the stores.
> Adults still show up at the company’s roughly 500 locations, however. On one recent afternoon in Manhattan, Evelyn Aguilar, 29, waited in line at the stuffing station of Build-A-Bear’s flagship store to create a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York. A hairstylist from Pottsville, Pa., Ms. Aguilar completed the traditional Build-A-Bear heart ceremony, where she had to wave a bear’s cushioned heart over her head, and made each of her stuffed animals a birth certificate..
> “Really all I ever wanted as a kid was a Build-A-Bear, and now I have them,” she says, noting that she has about 50 stuffed animals back home.
> Adults are also a newer focus for American Girl, a company that got its start in 1986 making dolls and books that depicted young girls living through different periods of American history. When the company rereleased the first six American Girl dolls in their original outfits in May 2021, roughly half went to grown-ups buying them for themselves, according to Jamie Cygielman, a Mattel senior vice president who is in charge of American Girl. The company came to that conclusion after conducting a survey of nearly 1,800 customers following the launch.
> Ms. Cygielman is taking various steps to reach this older audience. She helped plan adult-only product launches for new collections, including a line of travel bags with lifestyle brand Stoney Clover Lane. In the spring, American Girl released a set of floral frocks in partnership with fashion brand LoveShackFancy that come in doll, kid and adult sizes, ranging from $24 for the 18-inch doll to $385 for grown-up sizes.
>
> French braids on the hair of an American Girl doll owned by Susan Newman.
> The company also recently revamped the menus at its five full-service in-store restaurants across the country, which now feature fewer chicken nuggets and more light bites, as well as a more-robust cocktail list. In June, the cafes added a margarita and Aperol Spritz for summer, as well as more wine choices.
> Ms. Cygielman attributes some of the uptick in interest among adult consumers to social media. Videos tagged “American Girl Doll” have a collective 361 million views on TikTok. Many feature adults and their dolls in matching outfits.
> The back stories the company creates for each doll has spawned internet memes from people dreaming up their own character traits using the format of “we need an American Girl Doll who…” One, showing a doll with a bag of shredded cheese, read: “We need an American Girl Doll who eats cheese out of the bag with her hand.”
> SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
> Which toys from childhood do you miss? Join the conversation below.
> Kelsi Silveira, 27, and Marley Stokes, 25, recently visited an American Girl store in New York City as a lighthearted tribute to their childhood selves. The women didn’t expect to buy anything, but each ended up purchasing miniature stuffed dogs that resembled pets they owned back home in Columbia, S.C.
> “It was just a crazy coincidence that we both found both of those,” says Ms. Stokes, a coach for beauty pageants.
> Ms. Newman, the 34-year-old financial adviser who collects American Girl dolls, visited the cafe at the same New York City location so she could have mimosas with a friend to celebrate picking out a wedding dress at a bridal shop down the street. Next to her, a doll sat clipped to the table in a tiny chair with a miniature plate and coffee cup assembled in front of it.
> Ms. Newman says she is planning an American Girl-themed bachelorette party. Not all of her bridesmaids have American Girls of their own, “but they don’t have to worry because I have seven,” she joked..
> Ms. Cygielman, the company president, says American Girl has only scratched the surface of future plans to lure more mature audiences into the stores. She saw the progress firsthand while having lunch at the New York City cafe a few months ago. She says she saw three separate groups of adult women celebrating birthdays with their dolls, no kids in sight.
> Older customers “have the means to be able to get what they want,” she says.
> —Jacob Gallagher contributed to this article


Click here to read the complete article
Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

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Subject: Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child
From: codigopo...@gmail.com (Codigo Postal)
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 by: Codigo Postal - Wed, 12 Oct 2022 03:59 UTC

On Tuesday, October 11, 2022 at 11:39:22 PM UTC-4, Joseph Bardsley wrote:
> On Monday, October 10, 2022 at 7:56:58 PM UTC-7, Codigo Postal wrote:
> > https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-business-of-selling-toys-to-your-inner-child-11665201646
> >
> > The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child
> >
> > From American Girl to Build-A-Bear, companies that cater to children are tailoring more products and marketing around adult consumers who want toys for themselves
> > By Rachel Wolfe Photographs by Pat Jarrett for The Wall Street Journal
> > Oct. 8, 2022 12:00 am ET
> > Mattel Inc.’s American Girl now has new adult cocktails at its in-store cafes and grown-up dresses that mimic outfits worn by its dolls. Lego A/S has more than 100 sets designed specifically for adults. Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., which lets kids design their own teddy bears, has a line of racy stuffed animals only for customers 18 and over. Even McDonald’s Corp. is now serving adult Happy Meals. (Yes, you get a toy.)
> > Grown-ups have long looked to childhood playthings for nostalgia, comfort or value as collectibles, inspiring a nickname within the toy industry: kidults. This market came of age during the pandemic as many Americans looked to reconnect with their past as a way of reducing stress, becoming a key driver of new sales of everything from games to trading cards. Some of the country’s biggest toy companies are now trying to build on that momentum with new products, e-commerce sites and marketing.
> > People aged 18 and up accounted for 14% of U.S. toy industry sales for the 12-month period ended June 30, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc., up from 9% in 2019. The $5.6 billion in sales to this group was up 26%, the second-biggest rise after customers aged 12 to 17. The most popular items for older consumers were building sets (think Legos), traditional plush (think stuffed animals) and action figures (think Star Wars and Marvel characters).
> >
> > Customers can have a burger and martini at one of American Girl’s in-store restaurants.
> > PHOTO: AMERICAN GIRL
> > Toy executives and analysts see this moment differently than other periods of nostalgia-based buying. Instead of stashing figurines unopened on a shelf, adults are actively engaging with the dolls, stuffed animals and toy weapons many had previously put away after childhood. There is also broader social acceptance of kidult preferences, they say. A 2021 survey of 2,000 adults by the U.S. Toy Association found that more than 50% of adults bought toys and games for their own use.
> > Susan Newman, a 34-year-old financial adviser, has a collection of American Girl dolls and is a member of online communities dedicated to them. Ms.. Newman, who lives in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, says she feels like a trendsetter.
> > “I see people in retirement who are like, ‘Gosh, I wish I had done…’ and I don’t live that way. I’m going to live like I want to,” she says.
> > This past week McDonald’s reached out to a similar set of buyers with the introduction of a new Happy Meal for adults. Its Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a limited-time collaboration with fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market, a designer worn by musicians such as Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.
> > Inside the golden-handled box is either a 10-piece chicken nugget order or a Big Mac plus medium fries with a medium drink. Each also comes with one of four figurines depicting altered versions of old-school McDonald’s mascots Grimace, the Hamburglar, Birdie or a new character called Cactus Buddy. The initiative has its own line of merchandise, including tees and hoodies.
> > “If nostalgia happens to help us be more authentic and relevant we’ll lean into it,” says Tariq Hassan, who oversees marketing and customer experience for McDonald’s USA.
> > Some of the world’s biggest toy companies are making a play for this emerging audience by creating adult-only e-commerce portals. One is Hasbro Inc., which makes everything from Nerf, Play-Doh and My Little Pony to Power Rangers, Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel and Star Wars action figures.. It now has a site geared to adults called Hasbro Pulse that sells an exclusive lineup of toys and poses ideas for new ones, with a pledge to produce them once a potential product meets a certain threshold.
> >
> > Susan Newman, right, and her sister, left, dressed up with the dolls when they were younger.
> > PHOTO: SUSAN NEWMAN
> > Since starting the site in 2018, Hasbro has built about a dozen products that started from an idea on Pulse, and some of these products had more than 25,000 backers. Recent creations include the $400 Ghostbusters Plasma Series Spengler’s Proton Pack, a wearable replica of the ghost-fighting weapon used in the Ghostbuster movies, a $350 Star Wars Razor Crest model spaceship and a $180 Transformers Victory Saber action figure.
> > Kwamina Crankson, who runs the Pulse platform, says most of the customers he’s spoken to aren’t planning to try to turn a profit on the toys by reselling them—they are buying them for their own enjoyment. “Some of those items people have been waiting their whole lives for it to exist and when it arrives, they want to unpack it,” Ms. Crankson says.
> > Hundreds of thousands of consumers have bought toys off the site, Mr. Crankson says, turning the platform into one of the biggest areas of growth for the company. Sales surged 69% in the first half of this year.
> > Another brand associated with children, Build-A-Bear, is increasingly reliant on older customers who want to design their own stuffed animals at some of the company’s retail locations across the country.
> > Adult birthday celebrations, wedding showers and corporate events are becoming a larger part of the company’s business, says Chief Executive Sharon Price John. At one recent summit for cloud software giant Salesforce Inc., for example, workers were able to dress their bears in company-branded merchandise, according to Build-A-Bear and Salesforce. Teens, tweens and adults now account for 40% of sales, Ms. Price John says, up from roughly 25% when she joined the company eight years ago.
> >
> > Evelyn Aguilar, center, and her boyfriend Anthony Knabb visited a Build-A-Bear store in Manhattan, where Ms. Aguilar created a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York.
> > PHOTO: RACHEL WOLFE
> > Last year Build-A-Bear also launched an 18-and-over e-commerce site called the Bear Cave, where adult consumers can order items such as a werewolf wearing boxer briefs or a “bring on the bubbly” rabbit holding a bottle of rosé. Bear Cave purchases can only happen on the web, to avoid confusion with offerings for children in the stores.
> > Adults still show up at the company’s roughly 500 locations, however. On one recent afternoon in Manhattan, Evelyn Aguilar, 29, waited in line at the stuffing station of Build-A-Bear’s flagship store to create a Pokémon named Grookey and a classic bear she named New York. A hairstylist from Pottsville, Pa., Ms. Aguilar completed the traditional Build-A-Bear heart ceremony, where she had to wave a bear’s cushioned heart over her head, and made each of her stuffed animals a birth certificate.
> > “Really all I ever wanted as a kid was a Build-A-Bear, and now I have them,” she says, noting that she has about 50 stuffed animals back home.
> > Adults are also a newer focus for American Girl, a company that got its start in 1986 making dolls and books that depicted young girls living through different periods of American history. When the company rereleased the first six American Girl dolls in their original outfits in May 2021, roughly half went to grown-ups buying them for themselves, according to Jamie Cygielman, a Mattel senior vice president who is in charge of American Girl. The company came to that conclusion after conducting a survey of nearly 1,800 customers following the launch.
> > Ms. Cygielman is taking various steps to reach this older audience. She helped plan adult-only product launches for new collections, including a line of travel bags with lifestyle brand Stoney Clover Lane. In the spring, American Girl released a set of floral frocks in partnership with fashion brand LoveShackFancy that come in doll, kid and adult sizes, ranging from $24 for the 18-inch doll to $385 for grown-up sizes.
> >
> > French braids on the hair of an American Girl doll owned by Susan Newman.
> > The company also recently revamped the menus at its five full-service in-store restaurants across the country, which now feature fewer chicken nuggets and more light bites, as well as a more-robust cocktail list. In June, the cafes added a margarita and Aperol Spritz for summer, as well as more wine choices.
> > Ms. Cygielman attributes some of the uptick in interest among adult consumers to social media. Videos tagged “American Girl Doll” have a collective 361 million views on TikTok. Many feature adults and their dolls in matching outfits.
> > The back stories the company creates for each doll has spawned internet memes from people dreaming up their own character traits using the format of “we need an American Girl Doll who…” One, showing a doll with a bag of shredded cheese, read: “We need an American Girl Doll who eats cheese out of the bag with her hand.”
> > SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
> > Which toys from childhood do you miss? Join the conversation below.
> > Kelsi Silveira, 27, and Marley Stokes, 25, recently visited an American Girl store in New York City as a lighthearted tribute to their childhood selves. The women didn’t expect to buy anything, but each ended up purchasing miniature stuffed dogs that resembled pets they owned back home in Columbia, S.C.
> > “It was just a crazy coincidence that we both found both of those,” says Ms. Stokes, a coach for beauty pageants.
> > Ms. Newman, the 34-year-old financial adviser who collects American Girl dolls, visited the cafe at the same New York City location so she could have mimosas with a friend to celebrate picking out a wedding dress at a bridal shop down the street. Next to her, a doll sat clipped to the table in a tiny chair with a miniature plate and coffee cup assembled in front of it.
> > Ms. Newman says she is planning an American Girl-themed bachelorette party. Not all of her bridesmaids have American Girls of their own, “but they don’t have to worry because I have seven,” she joked.
> > Ms. Cygielman, the company president, says American Girl has only scratched the surface of future plans to lure more mature audiences into the stores. She saw the progress firsthand while having lunch at the New York City cafe a few months ago. She says she saw three separate groups of adult women celebrating birthdays with their dolls, no kids in sight.
> > Older customers “have the means to be able to get what they want,” she says.
> > —Jacob Gallagher contributed to this article


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Re: The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

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 by: Zobovor - Wed, 12 Oct 2022 23:12 UTC

On Tuesday, October 11, 2022 at 9:59:39 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> I'm slightly surprised they mentioned Victory Saber as a TF success story on Hasbro Pulse, rather than the far more iconic and expensive Unicron. Victory Saber is hardly more expensive than a Titan at MSRP, but Unicron is beyond Titan-class. I think someone referred to it as "Divorce-Class."

Yeah, there have been plenty of Masterpiece toys that easily surpassed Victory Saber's MSRP. (It looks like getting all six Trainbots to form Raiden will cost consumers close to $900 when all is said and done!)

Zob (they probably just did some cursory research into whatever HasLab projects were completed recently)

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 by: Zobovor - Wed, 12 Oct 2022 23:23 UTC

On Monday, October 10, 2022 at 8:56:58 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> The Business of Selling Toys to Your Inner Child

Thanks for copy-and-pasting the article, since I wasn't able to read the entire thing online.

> People aged 18 and up accounted for 14% of U.S. toy industry sales for the 12-month period ended June 30, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc., up from 9% in 2019.
I always felt like the numbers skew significantly higher than what the statisticians claim. It felt like ten percent back during the Beast Wars days. Nowadays I'd say it's probably closer to 20 or 30, if not higher. I wonder if they're only looking at retail sales, or sales from online vendors like BBTS that cater specifically towards collectors?

There are a lot of factors at play here, and the article obviously couldn't cover all of them. I think an important factor that they overlooked is the millennial tendency to want to continue having fun well into adulthood. They watched their parents slaving away, toiling every day at jobs they hated, and the millennials don't want to do that. They work only as much as they have to, and want to spend their days doing the things they love. Having jobs is only a means to an end to fulfil their hobbies. So, I think that collecting toys is connected to this. Millennials don't want to grow up. I'm not saying this in a bad way. It's just a different lifestyle approach.

Zob (is a 46-year-old boy)

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