My Toy Fair 2018 Reactions

This week has seen the London Toy Fair take place at the Olympia exhibition centre, where many of the latest toys from Disney were shown off to the press and retailers.  It was packed with toy companies including Funko, Tomy, Revell and many more distributors showing off products from Disney.

There was lots of exciting new products on display, that will be coming out in 2018, from many different franchises including The Incredibles 2, Wreck It Ralph 2, Christopher Robin, Big Hero 6, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Marvel Infinity War.

However, the majority of these new products were unfortunately under “Non Disclosure Agreements”, so I’m not able to share too much on these.  There were plenty of new items based on The Incredibles 2 on display and a few items based on Wreck It Ralph 2, which all had signs on them saying “No Photos”, regardless of what company was making them.

And to be totally honest, everything that was on display from both of these movies could have been released before, since they look identical to their look from the original movies, as no new characters were out.  This was also the case for some items from the Big Hero 6 TV show and upcoming Christopher Robin movie, which seemed odd to restrict people seeing them.

Other new merchandise based on the upcoming Mickey Mouse’s 90th Anniversary were also on display from a wide range of companies, but again much of this was under photo restrictions.

There was nothing was on display that was from Solo or Infinity War, bar a few items with a generic logo, saying “Coming Soon”.  With just months until the movie’s release, Disney have a tight grip on these new products.

There was lots of other merchandise on display, many of which has been previously announced including many figures from Sideshow Collectibles, Hot Toys, Kotobukiya, Hasbro and Funko.

With three major Toy Fairs taking place in London, New York and Nuremberg during January and February, new products will be shared at all of these events.  It makes sense for companies to spread out their new announcements, but there were also many major companies missing from this event including Mattel, Hasbro and LEGO. 

This made this event, much like the rest of toy industry as a whole, feel like its struggling, since toy sales down and major retailers like Toys R Us closing stores.  And with major companies using the internet to announce their own products, it does feel like these shows aren’t as important, as even companies like LEGO aren’t putting as much focus on events, by saying “only products launching the first half of 2018 will be in the LEGO booth this year at Toy Fair. We will not be showing any products launching June or later.”

The event did seem pretty quiet and there was many empty spaces and aisles were very wide to spread out what was there.

However there was still lots of great items on display and I’ll be sharing some photos and details of some of the cool Disney merchandise on display over the coming days.