The month of July normally represents the start of the toy import season ahead of the holidays, and represents around 9% of annual shipments. This year is off to a swift start, with a 7% growth in imports in July. Amongst the categories dolls and figures continue to stumble, falling 4% in July after a poor season last year. While video game imports are down 8%, this may reflect delayed purchasing ahead of PlayStation VR’s launch in October. Movies matter too – Disney and Hasbro are outperforming Mattel, at least in terms of imports.

The ‘back to school’ season is only just underway, but it is already time to start thinking about toy sales ahead of the holidays. So, what can trade data tell us about toy trends?

Firstly, the peak import season actually starts in July, which has historically accounted for 9.1% of the subsequent 12 months’ shipments, and runs through October, Panjiva data shows. Second, toy sales in July were 7.3% higher than a year earlier, bringing the 12 month total to a level 1.1% higher than the same period a year earlier and 5.5% above 2014 levels. This shows the downtrend in toy imports since 2011 is firmly broken.

U.S. TOY IMPORTS HEAD UP INTO PEAK SEASON

Source: Panjiva

Amongst the various categories building blocks, including Lego, performed best in July with a 7.6% increase in imports vs. a year earlier, whilst dolls / figures fell 3.8%. The latter also had a bad season last year with a 24.7% drop in shipments in the July to November 2015 period.

Star Wars related toys jumped 105% last holiday season with the release of ‘Episode 7’ – it remains to be seen if ‘Rogue One’ will generate similar interest. So far it hasn’t as July imports fell 5.6% on a year earlier. Video games are a much bigger category, and while it had a strong season last year imports were down 7.6% in July. This likely reflects consumers holding back spending on the category ahead of the launch of Sony’s virtual reality system in October.

STAR WARS AWAKENS, VIDEO GAMES VIRTUALLY GROWING

Source: Panjiva

The battle between the toy franchise owners remains fierce, particularly following aborted merger talks between Mattel and Hasbro earlier in 2016, according to Bloomberg. Hasbro imports have grown by 23.6% in the three months to July vs. a year earlier, but Mattel is struggling and contracted 3.5%. Movies clearly matter. Hasbro holds the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Transformers’ franchises, while Mattel holds more traditional brands like ‘Barbie’ and ‘Hot Wheels’. Mattel has only grown on a quarterly basis in three periods since the start of 2014.

When it comes to growth, Disney won’t let it go. Growth in toy imports kicked off in late 2014 ahead of the launch of “Frozen”. That has continued this year with a 26.7% growth in the quarter ending July 31 vs. a year earlier. There’s still a long way to go in the toy import season though, so nothing should be taken for granted.

MOVIES MATTER MORE THAN NOSTALGIA FOR TOY SALES

Source: Panjiva

 

This post was first published in the Panjiva Daily, which features global trade news and data-driven insights and is free for all Panjiva subscribers. To find out more email sales@panjiva.com.