Upswing For Toys?

[spockoda]

This post is based on my personal opinion based on my observations over the past few months. If you are reading this toys are probably a part of your life whether it be collecting them yourself or buying them for your kids or relatives. Maybe both. Therefore if you have browsed stores for toys over the past few years you can't deny the toy market has seemed to shrink considerably as fewer items were being made available to choose from. Online may be a different thing, I am talking mostly about physical retail outlets. Anyhow, it seems like this holiday season was a bit of an upswing for toys in my view. My wife had difficulty finding quite a few of the items on my "wish list" and having done some shopping over the past weeks I have noticed a lot of bare toy pegs/shelves out there. I feel this could be a good sign for traditional toys. Anyone have any thoughts on my observations?

[anna]

I noticed that my secret santa wanted some Joe items but I wasn't able find any joe stuff(save some single carded figs in a doller store) but sady I failed to find what he wanted (He seemed happy with what I sent though)

[waywardmonk]

In terms of sales, I agree that brick & mortar stores did well this year. At least the last week before Christmas anyway. Shelves at TRU, Walmart & Target near me were almost completely empty. I don't feel like there was that great a selection of toys though, just that parents were buying whatever happened to be there in order to have something under the tree. The fact that Star Wars toys continue to sell no matter what they make and that ReAction has managed to convince retailers to carry their lines is a good indicator that the toy market is healthy. It's also noteworthy that there were many budget lines introduced all around which I think has helped. Still, I did the majority of my christmas shopping on-line again this year. I usually do for convenience and the best deals, but the few times I went out to stores looking for something this year, it was either out of stock or not carried in stores. One thing I did more of this year was order on-line and pick up in store. I thought this was interesting because I was able to get in and out of stores in just 5 minutes with what I wanted, but I felt the stores were losing out on shoppers like me not picking up anything extra because we didn't wander the stores or wait on lines and find other things to buy.