Educational toys ride healthy sales curve
Author: DSN Retailing Today

Toy sales had another down year in 2004, falling nearly 3% to $20.1 billion, but that wasn't the case for learning and educational toys, which posted an unexpected and welcome resurgence. While retailers watched sales fall in most toy categories, sales of educational toys surged nearly 19%, helped in large part by products that target preschool kids.

According to research firm The NPD Group, the "learning and exploration" toy category rang up $510.4 million in sales last year compared to $421.2 million in 2003.That was the largest increase in any category, with the second largest coming in infant and preschool, with sales increasing 10% to $2.8 billion in 2004.

NPD Funworld analyst Anita Frazier attributed the increase in learning toy sales to an influx of strong new lines that clicked with kids and parents. "The resurgence of learning toys can be attributed to a number of well marketed and innovative new product introductions into the industry last year," said Frazier, citing popular new lines from industry leaders like LeapFrog, V-Tech and Fisher-Price.

The increase came at a time when the industry was worried about a big sales drop. Those fears were fueled by the closings of two of the country's largest learning toy specialists, Zany Brainy and Imaginarium, which led to the belief that a lack of shelf space would hurt sales. But a holiday slump for the learning sector never materialized and the bump in 2004 has retailers and manufacturers more optimistic as they enter the 2005 holiday season.