The pre-school category made up 13 per cent of all toy sales last year, notching up some £382 million. Over the next few pages, we offer a round up of what some of the key companies have coming up in their portfolios, as well as presenting the latest sector data from NPD…
AS THE largest standard category, the pre-school toys sector remains a corner stone of the market accounting for £382 million and 13 per cent of all toy sales in 2011 (source: NPD Consumer Panel). The two to three years age group is the highest valued age group across toys, accounting for 22 per cent of all purchases. The largest area within pre-school toys is vehicles, accounting for 21 per cent of value sales (source: NPD EPoS Panel). Thomas & Friends remains the top property and accounts for more than a quarter of all sales, while Chuggington is the second largest, followed by Fireman Sam. In 2012 there has been early growth from Peppa Pig, Bob the Builder and Cars in pre-school vehicles. The second largest category is figures and play- sets, accounting for just over 20 per cent of all purchases. While Playmobil remains the top property, Octonauts has seen strong growth. Pre-school electronic learning has
also experienced strong growth with sales up 49 per cent on 2011. This has been driven by a number of new innovations with both LeapFrog and VTech launching pre-school tablets, LeapPad Explorer and Innotab, the second half of 2011. These have continued into 2012 making them the number one and two properties within pre-school electronic learning YTD. Licences are extremely competitive within pre- school, with many mature properties, as well as plenty of new brands battling for sales. Overall, licences account for 32 per cent of all pre-school toy sales. The top two are Thomas & Friends and Peppa Pig, however there has been some extremely strong growth from Cars, Mickey and Friends, Bob the Builder and Batman early this year, as well as new brands such as Octonauts, Jungle Junction, Everything’s Rosie, Baby Jake and Raa Raa The Noisy Lion all contributing to sales.