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Passionate Team // Toys for children or adults, the gap is closing
With icons from pop culture, decorative objects or products from our favourite TV series and films, the toy market has outgrown children and is exploding in the adult sphere !
Passionate Team // Toys for children or adults, the gap is closing
Toys have always been and still are defined as objects intended for children. However, we are increasingly seeing exceptions to this.
In the 1950s, the toy industry exploded and brought some of the classics of the time into the posterity of pop culture. From then on, some toys were collected as symbols of an era or a movement.
Lego, a strategy that pays off
There is no need to introduce the Danish giant of the consumer construction game, known as one of the most ambitious companies in the toy sector.
Lego, which until twenty years ago only sold proprietary products (without franchises) and only for children, has considerably expanded its range of products, notably thanks to licences giving them the right to manufacture toys featuring the heroes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, James Bond or Stranger Things and many others.
But Lego didn’t stop there. Creating the Architecture range in 2010 and adding expensive and complex products to the Creator and Technic ranges, clearly aimed directly at adults, brought Lego to older clients with greater purchasing power. And why wouldn’t they, when you bear in mind that the toy industry represents more than €3 billion in annual turnover ?
It also brings Lego to a fan base that would not necessarily have thought of the brand, by bringing them products from their favourite TV series.
Plus déco que jouet
Toys are often used as decoration. Some small manufacturers such as Candylab or Playforever have understood this.
For example, they offer various ranges that stylishly imitate legendary vehicles such as Playforever’s Luft, a true parody of the emblematic Porsche 911, or Candylab’s Drifter 978, which pays homage to the Land rover Defender of the 1970s.
Toys with well thought-out and successful designs and finishes that are more likely to be prominently displayed on a shelf or desk than hidden at the bottom of a toy box.
Re-releases for the nostalgic
As far as video games are concerned, major brands such as Nintendo or Sony have in recent years played the nostalgia card by offering miniature re-releases of the emblematic game consoles of the 90s and 2000s such as the first Playstation or the legendary NES and super NES.
These are sold with a number of cult games pre-installed, making them much easier to use.
In conclusion
Over the last twenty years, the toy industry has reinvented itself to reach a wider and older audience. This is how Lego was able to become the world’s largest toy manufacturer in 2014, as a result of its policy of broadening ranges and making extensive use of franchises.
Other companies such as the Funko Pop figurines have applied the same recipe, franchises + mass distribution and it has worked for them too. Funko Pop are growing in popularity thanks to partnerships with Marvel, Game of Thrones or Disney.
The craze for toys for big kids has also allowed smaller companies like Playforever to grow and bring new and very enjoyable things to the market.
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And if you are a big child yourself, you can find other toys in our favourites here or there.
Photo credits : 1/ Playforever 2&3/ Lego 4/ Playforever 5/ Candylab 6/ Nitendo 7/ Funko
