How toy and game companies are winning back their grown-up former customers

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Grown-ups like toys too, and many are increasingly shelling out for relics of their youth that evoke a late 20th-century or turn-of-the-century nostalgia. Toy companies noticed and started whipping up everything from adult-targeted products to boozy drinks in toy stores. Here's the story of how toy companies are inviting you and your grown-up money to come back and play.

STATE OF PLAY

• Meet the “kidults” – consumers aged 18 and up who collectively bought $1.7 billion in toys and games in the US from June 2021 to June 2023, according to data shared with CNN by Circana, a consumer research group.
• It's an increasing trend: US grown-up toy purchases were approaching a fifth of all toy sales (17%) for the 12 months ending in June. That’s a big spike from only 9% in 2019.
• Social media has played a big role, as users on TikTok and Instagram fill timelines with posts exalting toy re-releases and unite under the banner of their preferred playthings.

THE (PURCHASING) POWER OF NOSTALGIA

• A key component of the kidult origin story that helps explain their rise may be nostalgia. The increase in grown-up toy buys coincides with the pandemic, which ushered in heightened levels of anxiety, says Krystine Batcho, a licensed psychologist in Syracuse, New York, whose research focuses on the psychology of nostalgia. Covid made people think about dying more, so they got introspective.
• Nostalgia also “counteracts loneliness” by making us feel connected to something bigger in society, Batcho says. The pandemic helped fuel an increase in purchases for games, collectibles, building sets and the like as people isolated at home looked for ways to entertain themselves, says Juli Lennett, Circana's toy industry adviser. Social media connected "like-minded toy consumers," Lennett tells CNN. "Tribes formed around certain toy categories and brands. It continues to this day."
• Research indicates millennials and Gen Zers are now in life stages that are prime for feeling nostalgic, according to Batcho. "The transition away from childhood and adolescence to adulthood entails a bittersweet conflict between the desire to grow into independence and the desire for the carefree innocence and security of childhood," she says. How to cope with this conflict? Utilizing the spending power of your grown-up independence to buy toys is one option.

TOYS’ EXPANDING REACH

• Many of the world's biggest toy companies have gotten a sales boost from the kidult trend. Mattel's iconic American Girl has seen an influx of those purchases recently, starting two years ago when it re-released six of its original dolls. American Girl President Jamie Cygielman tells CNN those dolls -- at $150 a piece -- started selling out the first day they were listed online, and based on a later company survey, more than half of the purchases were "women purchasing for themselves, not for a child."
• Cygielman says American Girl "started really leaning into" the unconventional sales, re-releasing more dolls and doll outfits adults grew up with, as well as adding more alcoholic beverages to its in-store café menu.
• Lego started to build an entire "Adults Welcome" product line in 2021, pitching their grown-up sets as "mindful activity" that can foster "a zone of zen."
• Add to this the new toys that keep coming from the broader entertainment industry's age-old practice of perpetually reincarnating tried and true character brands like Barbie, Ninja Turtles and the multiverse of product lines stemming from Spider-Man and superheroes writ large. Updating beloved classics can make toys a shared experience between grown-ups and their kids, while affording lucrative cross-promotional opportunities outside of toys.
• Will the trend last? Kidults may be forced to face grown-up realities like inflation and resumed college loan payments. Many Americans have less money in their wallets and are cutting back on nonessential spending. "If the conditions continue, we can expect a pullback in toy spending for adults," Circana toy industry adviser Lennett tells CNN.

Are you a kidult? Or, like some of us, do you launder your toy purchases through children? Tell us about the things you buy to feel like a kid again in the comments below.

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