It’s that time of the year again – long days, thousands of steps, sore feet but 2024 Nuremberg Toy Fair didn’t disappoint…
The event is vast: 12 exhibition halls spread across 165,00 m² (that’s 23 football pitches!)
2,146 exhibitors from 69 countries. 58,000 visitors from 128 countries.
Pretty much the entire industry is there.
Amongst this year’s toy trends, the rise in popularity of kidult toys was THE topic of conversation.
Passionate, nostalgic, fun-loving and often with deep pockets, kidults are now an important and fast-growing target audience for toy manufacturers.
So much so that the Spielwarenmesse organisors created ‘Life’s a Playground’ – a whole area within the Insights Zone to showcase the latest products in the kidult category (which now accounts for 30% of toys bought in the UK).
There were four separate display ‘rooms’ to wander through, as follows:
- Collectibles: toys that are or will become collectors’ items. From Squid Game to Star Wars and Peanuts – current and classic IPs were featured across construction kits, character plush, figurines and playsets.
- Premium Collectibles: exclusive, rare (and expensive) toys were on display… think Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000 broomstick, the Star Wars Lego Venator Class Star Destroyer, Tintin’s rocket model, Lord of the Rings jewellery and 007 model cars.
- Creative Fantasy: was all about collectible, role-playing or miniature games that involve upfront creative input from the kidult player e.g. figurine painting within Warhammer games or scene-setting within Humblewood.
- Tabletop: the latest table and board games across different genres from an Escape Room in a Box to Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery and the best-selling Hitster party game.
Nuremberg definitely nailed it this year in showing the industry that kidults are here to stay – as more and more adults discover their inner child.
And in our increasingly stressful world, play is being seen as not only fun, but healthy and valuable for adults.
Read about trends from 2024 London Toy Fair here.