Toy sales in the 2015 holiday season look healthy, according to NPD Group. The Port Washington, N.Y., market research firm says global toy sales grew 7 percent in the first nine months of the year and “are on the plus side heading into the fourth quarter.”
Toy sales in Mexico and Poland and other small countries are growing faster than developed countries, and Russia is the fastest growing of the markets NPD tracks, the company states in a news release from its retail tracking service. Despite high inflation, an international embargo and diminished disposable income, Russian consumers bought 7 percent more toys in unit sales for the first nine months of 2015 than they did a year earlier, NPD estimates. The largest major toy category in Russia is building sets and this category is growing 50 percent faster than the rest of that country's toy market.
No one toy is dominating the global market this holiday season, according to NPD.
“This year, the hype is not centered on any one toy or property; there is popularity around a variety of products, which is making 2015 a particularly strong year for the toy industry in markets around the world,” notes NPD toy analyst Frederique Tutt.