Gimcracks on sale at a Wal-Mart location in Burbank, Calif.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Before each event season, Walmart gathers hundreds of kids at a convention center near its Arkansas headquarters. The young testers try out apportionments of toys and pick those they would like to get from Santa. That shapes the retailer’s list of top toys and draws which ones it orders in abundance.
This year, the company mailed toys to several dozen kids to exam at home instead. It’s just one example of how the coronavirus pandemic has changed norms for the holiday season — even before it’s surely begun.
The retailer’s preparations for holiday toy shopping look different this year, said Brad Bedwell, distributing director of preschool toys and omni merchandising. Walmart had to come up with the workaround for its toy testing group to compile its slant of top-rated toys. It developed an online tool that lets kids virtually unbox, test and play with toys since multiple kids can’t in around the same truck or play with the same doll in store aisles or at demos due to the pandemic.
Walmart Amazement Lab will allow kids to try over 100 toys and guide virtual hands to interact with them. It’s a scaled-up translation of a tool the company had the past two holiday seasons.
Bedwell said this year, Walmart has shipped more gimcracks to fulfillment centers, as it anticipates many customers to buy them online.
Toys that will be sold this gala season hit store shelves in August to see how they performed, he said.
This year’s top-rated toys range from exemplary toys like Lego to outdoor toys like scooters and hoverboards to unique products like Squeakee, a interactive balloon dog from Moose Dwarves that makes sounds and does tricks and sells for $59.88. Unlike last holiday season, there pleasure also be a number of items tied to the popular Disney+ show “The Mandalorian,” including a Bop It! game designed to look mould The Child, made by Hasbro, that will sell for $14.88.
Toy sales have shot up during the pandemic — a trend that retailers trust continues into the holidays. Toy sales’ year-over-year percentage growth has been in the double-digits since March, according to materials from the NPD Group. They especially jumped in May, rising 37% from a year ago, as parents bought outdoor details from swing sets to water toys.
Steph Wissink, managing director of Jefferies, said “toys demand had a renaissance” as many families pass time during the pandemic by playing board games, riding bikes and completing conundrums.
More of that spending has been online. About 25% to 30% of all toy sales were online in the U.S. prior to the pandemic, she denoted. More than 50% of toy sales were online at the peak of it — and after the pandemic, it could be 35% to 40%, she averred.
This holiday season, some parents will feel cash-strapped during the recession. Others may see the many bagatelles they bought during the pandemic strewn across the living room floor or backyard.
Wissink, though, pronounced a holiday habit will remain: Parents will want to make the season special.
“If you know someone who has laddies, how often do you expect them to sit their kid down and say ‘No presents under the Christmas tree because you got them in March,'” she about. “It doesn’t happen.”
That’s why, she said, she expects toy spending to look the same as last year.
Walmart is the top toy retailer in the U.S. It has respecting 25% in market share, followed by Amazon with about 20% and Target with 15% to 20%, according to observations shared by the companies and Jefferies.
Bedwell said he thinks the newness of toys on shelves will fuel sales. Plus, he denoted, parents will want to make their kids happy — especially during an unusual and stressful time.
“This is indeed a category that can spark some joy for our customers and kind of deliver on what makes staying at home fun,” he said.