some quotations from an article about the global toy market on page one of today’s Wall Street Journal Online, called Why Industry Loves the Global Kid, by By Lisa Bannon and Carlta Vitzthum. unfortunately, you have to have a subscription to read the article online.
“…Two recent developments are changing kids’ tastes. One is the rapid world-wide expansion of cable and satellite TV channels, which along with movies and the Internet expose millions of kids to the same popular icons. For example, Walt Disney Co. now operates 24 Disney-branded cable and satellite channels in 67 countries outside the U.S. — up from zero eight years ago.
The other development is the widening international reach of retailing giants such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Toys `R’ Us Inc. and Carrefour SA, which between them have opened 2,300 stores outside their home markets. Increasingly, the mass retailers enter into exclusive deals with toy and consumer-products companies, allowing them to stage huge, coordinated promotional campaigns….
…Some toys, games and animated characters don’t cross national boundaries. German children, for example, rarely play with action figures. According to the NPD Group, which tracks toy sales, action figures last year made up just 1% of the German toy market, compared with 5% of the U.S. and 6% of the U.K. toy markets. American kids want Nascar toy cars, while European kids want Formula One models. Cheerleader-themed anything is irrelevant outside the U.S. And few American companies sell toys in the Islamic world. Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, has no plans to do so….
…Through this research, with focus-groups conducted with kids in dozens of countries, Mattel learned world-wide demand existed for many of the same toys. ‘The general, overriding belief was that kids are different’ around the world, [Matt Bousquette, president of the Mattel Brands unit] says. ‘But we discovered that wasn’t the case. Kids are more alike than they are different.’”
