OPINION Never work with kids and animals?
Industry consultant Steve Reece explains why children love those four-legged friends – and why toy companies not working with the pair are missing a trick
RECENTLY we had a new addition in our house. A bright eyed, bushy tailed puppy arrived to disturb us through the night and chew the furniture. Yet despite the carnage it’s caused, my kids love the dog. They love real animals, and they love toy animals. The showbiz saying
‘never work with kids and animals’ does not appear to apply to the toy industry. In fact, you could almost state the opposite – always work with kids and animals. There are countless
examples of successful toys based on or derived from animals. We have entertainment-driven brands based on animals, like Madagascar, entertainment-based
brands featuring animals, and whole brands where toy animals are a driving force, like Schleich for instance. So clearly animals and
toys are a proven combination, but why is that? Well, if we look at why and how kids play, we can see that in reality, boys and girls tend to play in different ways. Boys lean towards more aggressive, boisterous play and in my experience (after conducting focus groups with over a thousand kids) like more aggressive, tough looking and dangerous animals most. Girls on the other hand tend to have a more nurturing play pattern, which is reflected in the type of animals they prefer. And horses. I’m not
entirely sure why, as I’ve never quite got a child to explain it, but girls do seem to love horses. Having got that obvious, if controversial part out of the way, the other key point here is characterisation. Characters sell toys. Characters with quirky, funny, tough and cute personalities can deliver what kids are looking for in their toys. Where they have on-going exposure to those characters via movies, DVDs, TV or other media, they begin to form a close affinity with those characters, and unsurprisingly begin to want toys based on their favourite.
None of this may be news to most people
reading this, but the point is how easily an aspirational universe of characters can be built by selecting animals with different personalities and characteristics. So do we just have to
throw a few animals into the mix to create strong, toyetic brands? Well obviously there is more to it. Perhaps the most critical element is to make your lion, penguin, dog, cat,
dinosaur or horse distinctly different from all the other ones out there. There are two reasons for this: one, to separate your animal toys from all the others already out there, and two, to create endearing traits and ironic contrasts in your characters.
Steve Reece is a leading consultant in the toy and games industry. Contact him via his blog
www.stevenreece.com or by emailing
steve.reece@
vicientertainment.co.uk The Ghost of Christmas yet to come
ToyTalk editor David Smith proves his critics wrong by looking back on Christmas and ahead to the Toy Fair at the same time
WRITING for a print publication always throws up some anomalies, none greater than when you have to put yourself in a looking-ahead-boldly frame of mind for the February issue, when you are still fully immersed in the looking-back-fondly stage of the year. So, while on my website
I’ve been spending the past few weeks putting together a list of the best toys to launch in 2012, for this column I am having to fast-forward my brain to 2013, and January’s Toy Fair.
Despite the fact that
I’ve been writing for print media publications for more than 20 years now,
this is something that has never come easy to me. I’ve never been able to knock out a convincing Christmas piece in August. And similarly, at the
It’s all about as
disorientating as being visited by the Ghost of Christmas yet to come. I mean think about it – does that even make sense?
I’ve never been able to knock out a
convincing Christmas piece in August. And similarly, at the moment, I just can’t look past the day that the entire year has been leading up to. David Smith, ToyTalk
moment, I just can’t look past the day that the entire year (at least as far as a toy website is concerned) has been leading up to.
But if there’s one thing that thinking about the Toy Fair does: it is to make you ponder on the inevitable annual cycle of this industry.
For the toy world, the
next New Year’s Day falls not on January 1st, but on January 22nd. That is the day when thousands of new toys will be presented to an expectant public. Some of these toys will be little more than the first ultrasound scans of hopeful parents-to-be, others will already be up and toddling about. But whatever stage
they are at when they make their first appearance at the Toy Fair, they will be last year’s news when the next January rolls around. To continue with our
baby metaphor, they will have grown up and gone to
David Smith runs the consumer-focused toy news site ToyTalk (
www.toytalk.co.uk) and is the author of the book 100 Classic Toys. 24 February
www.toynews-online.biz
college and a whole new generation of new arrivals will be gurgled over in January 2014. It’s a ‘circle of life’ thing
(feel free to break into song) and perhaps it is only fitting to be looking ahead to the new arrivals, while surrounded by Christmas cheer and a growing stack of presents from this year’s crop.
Because when we are
all walking around the Olympia Grand Hall, listening to all the squawking new arrivals, at least part of our minds will already be thinking 11 months down the line, wondering which of these toys are going to make a splash next Christmas.
So there you have it, those toy companies failing to work with kids and animals will be missing a trick, but remember: it’s not just any old animal that’s needed.
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