Blogs

SHARON PRICE JOHN, PRESIDENT OF BUILD-A-BEAR, OPENING KEYNOTE November 7th – 9th, 2024   CHICAGO (July 24th, 2024) - Get ready to learn, pitch and network your way to success with s...

Gameplay Stratego, as you may have guessed, is a game all about strategy. It’s almost like chess, actually. Each player has 30 game pieces, and all of them have different meanings, but perhaps ...

Mark your calendars to make a difference: Attend The Toy Foundation’s “Party with a Purpose” and be a part of an industry-wide movement to bring the joy of play to hospitalized child...

You’re Getting Old   Gameplay To win You’re Getting Old , you must prove you’re not getting old! The game comes with a set of 300 prompt cards, 6 Path To Getting Old cards, a...

  When The Toy Association first announced our plans to have a presence in Los Angeles in September, our goal was to provide more companies with a space to do business in the heart of LA\'s \"to...

  Former Director of Product Development Tom Runtz named Vice President of Product Development after more than ten years of service   VERNON HILLS, IL (Jul. 16, 2024) - Learning Resourc...

As the toy industry gets ready for fall previews in Los Angeles, we’re excited to announce that The Toy Association’s first-ever LA fall marketplace is officially sold out, with 78 toy com...

  I’m thrilled to share the opening of my solo toy photography exhibition, \"Out of the Toybox: The Toy Photography of Mitchel Wu,\" at the renowned Science Museum Oklahoma. This 400,000 s...

  Earlier this week, The Toy Association announced that nearly 600 exhibitors are already registered for Toy Fair 2025, taking place next March 1 to 4 at the Javits Center in New York City. Th...

  BELOIT, Wis (July 9, 2024) — Today, leading international toy and game company PlayMonster Group LLC, and premier wholesale representative group Diverse Marketing, ...

Preparations for Toy Fair® 2025 are in full swing, with nearly 600 exhibitors already registered to showcase their latest innovations in front of a massive audience of global retail buyers, licens...

  PICKLE EVERYTHING GAMES LAUNCHES FLAVORFUL NEW EXPANSION PACK: THE FOODIE DECK   New deck features food-themed clues and exciting gameplay enhancements, now available at retail  ...

  MC (Mary Couzin): Hi Joe! I\'m sure our readers would love to hear about your recent incredible successes (Congrats!), so please share what’s new at Gray Matters?   JB: (Joe Barr...

On June 28, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed into law HB 1333, the Toy Association-sponsored legislation that lifts a long-held ban on the use of recycled materials in all stuffed toys manufa...

Storm: Dawn of a Goddess   Storm: Dawn of a Goddess tells the backstory of Storm, one of Marvel’s X-Men: how one orphan-turned-street thief became one of Marvel’s most beloved heroi...

Ernő Rubik and his Magic Cube   Ernő Rubik and his Magic Cube was written by Kerry Aradhya and illustrated by Kara Kramer. It artfully and colorfully tells the story of the creation of the mo...

Trip Chaser – one of my favorite games yet!   Gameplay Trip Chaser is played entirely with cards, though it will take you all over the world. The object of the game is to travel to diffe...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Learning Express Toys Hosts 25th Annual Convention & Toy Expo at JW Marriott Tucson   Tucson, AZ – June 27, 2024 – Learning Express Toys, the nation\'s lea...

Any company that has showroom space in Los Angeles and will participate in 2025 preview activity is reminded to share their listing information to be included in The Toy Association’s ...

    This was the first Father\'s Day without my wonderfully fun, ever supportive, unconditionally loving, prototype testing, game-playing Dad, who passed a few months ago at the playful a...

  Since joining The Toy Association, it has been an incredible few weeks of connecting with colleagues, both old and new, as I re-engage with this incredible community. I’ve been inspire...

  A couple of weeks ago I was asked out of the blue to speak to 6th graders at a local elementary school on career day.   So, picture this: there I was, thrust into the limeligh...

  When our friends at Mattel tasked McHale Design to take on the project of creating branding, new packaging, and style guide for WWE’s 2024 action figure line, we enthusiastically embra...

  A few weeks I wrote about The Top 7 Mistakes Collectible Brands Make (and how you can avoid them), this goes into more depth on one of those, possibly the most fun one – Collabs...

Toys are machines around which play is created. Toys have influenced many important designers and artists Toys matter to all of us and to the world as a whole   Creating and bringing toys to ...

I have been a toy and game inventor and licensor for decades managing Lund and Company Invention, L.L.C. in Chicago. For more than 35 years we created a wide range of dolls, board games, preschoo...

The little stuffed animals that saw us through Y2K are back! Get in the Ford Taurus and join Arch on a nostalgic safari through his local gift shops.   In the late 1990s, Beanie Babies entered ...

$900,000 in Brand-New Toys Donated by Toy Community Will Bring Benefits of Play to Children in Need   The Toy Association is celebrating the first-ever International Day of Play&nbs...

NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2024 TOY & GAME INTERNATIONAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS ARE OPEN! People of Play (POP) is Accepting TAGIE Award Nominations NOW Through August 2nd SUBMIT YOUR NOMINATIONS HERE https:...

  Even though I’ve been in the play industry for 30 years, I’ve somehow never been to Licensing Expo so with this being my year dedicated to trying new things and attending new sho...