Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Talking Tariffs with Toy Book Editor-in-Chief James Zahn
275 Plays14 days ago
Tariffs, ever heard of em? The current US administration has released a number of reciprocal tariffs on just about every country the USA trades with, but what does that mean for US - more specifically - toy collectors. Joining us this week to discuss what impacts this has on collectors and what it means for the toys we love to buy, we welcome Toy Book Editor-in-Chief James Zahn!
Follow James on Instagram @therockfather and visit https://toybook.com to subscribe and stay up-to-date with the toy world!
Follow us @aic_podcast on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube
Start creating a podcast today with Zencastr! Learn more.
Intro and other voices by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
Proudly part of the Non-Productive Network
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Return to Regular Spots
00:00:03
Speaker
Are you ready, kids? Get your parents' permission, check your mailbox, and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast. I'm Eric.
00:00:15
Speaker
And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting, where we talk toy news, culture, and hauls. Along with our journeys as collectors.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Adventures in Collecting. ah Hello, Dave. It it is a what a time to be alive right now.
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah. um
Sponsorship and Giveaways
00:00:41
Speaker
You know, fresh off our live show back in the usual spots, back back in the in the remote studios, back in the the caves and indoor dungeons and or bedrooms.
00:00:52
Speaker
And or dragons. Yeah. Yeah. Dragons fund, fully funded dragons. Yeah. Fully funded large dragons. Yeah, congrats to ah to our our new friends at Four Horsemen Studios, to Jeremy, to ah to to all all the horsemen um on ah on a successful campaign. They're old friends, but they Jeremy finally came. We finally had somebody on.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. um So, you know, like we always say, we're and we're not an if, we're when. And we were we were once again correct with that. They reached all their funding goals. So ah super excited for people to get their dragons in probably like a year and a half or so. The good vibes continue to roll on. The good vibes continue. ah So before we get into this week's guest.
00:01:43
Speaker
I'm murdering my thirst with cherry obituary today. I almost forgot the, uh, the, the, Hey, liquid death, pay attention to us. Um, we would love a sponsorship. So, um, we're going keep, Dave's going keep drinking it, whether you sponsor her or not. So I don't know if that's a good, like bargaining chip, but, um, I'm still going to buy it. So,
00:02:03
Speaker
ah But a a little bit of delicious little bit of housekeeping. um So we just have ah one one bit of housekeeping this week, which is our ah monthly giveaway is live.
00:02:16
Speaker
So ah this month, as it is WrestleMania season, um we ah we are giving away our Our guest, who is going to log in shortly, is trying to trying to make me crack, and it's working.
00:02:31
Speaker
Uh-huh, me too. So our our monthly giveaway for ah for this month is a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive, ah Mattel Creations WWE wwe Ultimate Edition Shawn Michaels from last year. um It's the boyhood dream, Dave. Yeah, WrestleMania 12. No, WrestleMania 12. Yes, 12. 12.
00:02:50
Speaker
twelve no as many ah twelve yes twelve twelve um It's a perfect giveaway for ah for this month as WrestleMania is is quickly approaching.
00:03:01
Speaker
ah The figure is sold out everywhere. It was a big hit. So ah your chance to win one. The time we air, one week away. Yeah. um Head on over to our Instagram at AIC underscore podcast.
00:03:14
Speaker
You will find a pinned post with all of the instructions on what you need to do to enter to win it. Pretty simple. It's really just kind of like like the post, share the post, follow us, tag a couple of friends, tell us who your favorite ah current WWE w e star is. But
Gratitude and Event Recap
00:03:30
Speaker
you'll find that pinned on our profile Again, that is at AIC underscore podcast.
00:03:36
Speaker
ah We have no upcoming appearances or live events to plug at this time, which is. No, but thank you to Zap Comics. Yeah, that was super fun.
00:03:46
Speaker
um I think you just had a collapse of some kind. I don't know what, though. Oh, I know what it was. heard heard toys collapse in the background. it's That's not a big deal.
00:04:01
Speaker
I just looked. to I didn't see a bunch of pops fall over, so... if If you could only see what is what is directly off camera. um But yeah, so thank you everyone to to ZapCon, ah our folks at at Zap Comics for for hosting us. We had
Introduction to James Zahn
00:04:16
Speaker
a great chat with Blaine and Chris.
00:04:18
Speaker
If you did not yet listen to that or watch that video, head on over to our YouTube channel ah and... And relive the moment. Yeah. Live from ZapCon. We had great time. Thanks to everybody who came.
00:04:31
Speaker
questions. Thanks to everybody who stopped by. Yeah. Thanks to Rusty for manning the camera. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't have done it without him. But I think ah with that, I think it's time to ah to ah no longer bury the lead.
00:04:46
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So I mean. This is what we do. This is a fun one because this week's guest is ah he's already a friend of the pod. I mean, let's let's be let's be real here. I mean, you've you've you know him.
00:05:01
Speaker
ah You've seen him. Friend of the pod, friend of the toy. Yeah. Industry like pillar. I would go as far as a pillar of the collecting community. Yeah, absolutely. Our guest this week is someone who who doesn't just report the toy news, Dave. He
James Zahn's Career Path
00:05:16
Speaker
breaks it.
00:05:16
Speaker
ah You've seen his work in the Toy Book, the Toy Insider, the Pop and the Insider, and throughout numerous features across ah daytime television. He is the editor-in-chief of the Toy Book, a collector, and someone who's not afraid to ask the hard questions, especially when they impact the future of the hobby and the industry we love. Please welcome to the show our friend, your friend, the Rock Father himself, James Zahn. James, welcome to Adventures in Collecting.
00:05:45
Speaker
Hello. Thank you for having me. And it's been too long. We were just talking about that before the show, but we've known each other for years and have never recorded ah podcast together.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, well, we're we're checking that box tonight. we totally We've definitely all been to live music venues because we all have some form of Liquid Death somewhere.
00:06:08
Speaker
yeah Yes, we do. And what i what I was trying to make you crack on is the fact that Liquid Death is coming to the toy department. So we have the official Liquid Death pool float. from sunny days entertainment and uh comes in a box that looks a lot like liquid death water with uh much more attractive photos on it but uh they were actually working on some figures and i don't think those have come to fruition yet but wow hey let's put it this way licensing expo is next month and that's where i first met their licensing guy last year so lots happened in 12 months but
00:06:45
Speaker
all right, well, let him know that one of ah one of your favorite toy podcasts loves loves us some Liquid Death. so you know, maybe they drop a little, send you a little swag. You give them a pin, a sticker, like maybe maybe see seed the ah see the conversation
Toy Industry Challenges and Trends
00:07:02
Speaker
there.
00:07:03
Speaker
I've been murdering they're murdering my thirst, and they've been murdering my wallet for a couple years they because the water is not cheap. And when it first came out, the only place I could find it...
00:07:15
Speaker
I was a grocer here in i'm in the Midwest, but it's called Woodman's. And it was like $16 a case when that stuff first came out. But that was all in. Yeah, I like the iced tea variant.
00:07:27
Speaker
that's I think that's my favorite one so far. That and the totally not Dr. Pepper. That one's really good, too. Dr. What do they call it? Dr. Death. Dr. Death.
00:07:38
Speaker
Like Steve Williams. Yes. So before before we dive into some some pretty, i would say, ah uncharacteristically heavy stuff for us to talk about here on this on this show, um for our listeners who who may not know, ah how did you find your your way into the world of of toy journalism and and end up kind of steering the ship there at at the Toy Book?
00:08:03
Speaker
So I always say it's a very nonlinear career path that I've sort of fallen into things over the years. But the the weird thing for me to think about is that my first professional writing gig was 33 years ago.
00:08:24
Speaker
So I started writing music columns in the Quad Cities in the early 90s. And at that same i I was doing a cable access show.
00:08:36
Speaker
And even though I was a kid at the time, I was i was like 15, I was always thinking bigger. So pounding the pavement, dialing 411, information, pre-internet, no YouTube.
00:08:52
Speaker
I got bans on my cable access show when I was in high school. So I had Megadeth, Stone Temple Pilots, White Zombie, Oh, wow. And my favorite band of all time, Faith No More, which really opened the door ah to a lot of different things. So trial by fire, um learning to write, edit, shoot television. And then i was also writing. So I wrote for like three different publications at the time and went through a whole thing like everybody else does, you know, go to school and then
00:09:28
Speaker
I go on adventures and I went into business for a while and I fell into the retail side of things and I went corporate for a while and I Worked for Walmart. I worked for Kmart. I worked for Musicland Group in their Sam Goody division. And we sold toys there. It was when McFarlane was coming up.
00:09:45
Speaker
yeah My first holiday season with Walmart was 96 when Tickle Me Elmo came out. So there were these toy seeds being planted. But at the same time, I can never do just one thing, which is also true today.
00:10:02
Speaker
So I did journalism. I was acting. I wrote comic books, did all kinds of different things and was doing business. And then you start learning how all of this seemingly in like unconnected stuff is really interconnected.
00:10:18
Speaker
And it snowballs together because you have licensing and entertainment and consumer products and all of the insights that go together with that. And i was working on all these creative projects like movies
The Role of the Toy Book
00:10:31
Speaker
and things. And all of that has the licensing and the toys and all of that. So it comes together. I worked for other publishers over the years. I was the director of new media for Fangoria Entertainment for a number of years. So we had Fangoria Magazine and Starlog, if you remember that, for a while. And made more toy connections there because doing that, that was horror. So you're talking to people like NECA and Mezco and...
00:10:57
Speaker
it just all sort of comes together. And as I started creating more of a profile for myself, and I'd gotten this rock father moniker because I was doing work in music, and I was i was also managing an artist and directing music videos. I did stuff for Fear Factory, which some people that listen to the pod probably know, and different bands and things. And As I started developing that, I started writing more about toys just because I was interested in the business and ah what goes on behind it and behind the scenes. And I started consulting for a number of smaller toy companies.
00:11:38
Speaker
And through writing about all of that, it eventually came up to the collapse of the original Toys R Us. And a lot of my deep dive coverage of that really crossed over into the mainstream.
00:11:53
Speaker
And i i started getting quoted in larger outlets about Toys R Us because I was finding things. And also I had some folks on the inside where I was getting a little bit of intel that wasn't being reported elsewhere. And through that, I think I had landed on the radar of more people within the traditional toy industry and higher up the chain, eventually fell on the radar of ah Adventure Media and Events, which is our parent company, which has operated the toy book since
Impact of Tariffs on the Toy Industry
00:12:23
Speaker
1984.
00:12:24
Speaker
um And we have the Toy Insider and the Pop Insider, and they kept asking me to come on and join the joined the crew, and eventually I did. and I started out as a senior editor, then became a deputy editor, then editor in chief. And now I do, I'm editor in chief of the toy book. I'm senior editor on toy insider and pop insider. I'm the director of the pulse play awards and, uh, have all of these things kind of intersecting and it's a very, very unique role. And I,
00:12:58
Speaker
again, fall back on that nonlinear career path that leads here. So it's like, Hey, I did publishing years ago and now I'm doing publishing again. And for those that don't know the toy book and on the collector side, and say that there's a lot of people that don't know the toy book, but the toy book has been around since 1984. It's the leading trade publication covering the toy industry in North America.
00:13:24
Speaker
And, Through that, too, another role, another hat I wear. As of January, I'm now co-president of ITMA, which is the International Toy Trade Magazine Association, which has members from around the world. And, of course, that's very helpful now because of what we're going to talk about today.
00:13:42
Speaker
But yeah all of these different things that work together and the toy book, the toy book's first print edition debuted At the North American International Toy Fair in February of 1985. So the company started in 84. They sort of did a year long ramp up.
00:14:01
Speaker
They used to deliver. we We send out an e-news blast, which I know you guys get on Thursdays called the Toy Report. That used to be mailed to people and faxed to people.
00:14:13
Speaker
And they used to charge a lot of money for it. And there were ads in the old toy books because we actually have the archive, which lives in our main office, which is in Manhattan.
00:14:25
Speaker
And there were these ads that showed. a cartoon of the stereotypical 80s businessman sitting at his big desk and he's ripping his hair out.
00:14:36
Speaker
And it's like, you could rip your hair out and look for all this fun stuff or what all the information you're seeking or you pay us $150 and we'll fax you all the headlines you need once a week.
00:14:49
Speaker
And now we give it away for free in an email on Thursdays. But yeah, the Toy Bug's been covering all of it and has been... like a um de facto historian, if you want to call it that, through of now we're in volume 41, which we just debuted last month. Again, Toy Fair New York.
00:15:09
Speaker
And then Toy Insider, which you come to the events. That's the events part of our name. We put on something called Sweet Sweet. We do Holiday of Play. We got something new swirling that we'll tell you about soon. But Toy Insider is a consumer guide for parents, grandparents, gift givers, people buying stuff for their kids.
00:15:27
Speaker
So we hit you with the trade with Toy Book. I always equate it to being like the Hollywood reporter, but for toys. You might not work in the business, but you want to peel back the curtain and see what's in there.
00:15:38
Speaker
That's what we're all about. And then of course, the third thing is the Pop Insider launched in 2018. That is all collectibles and licensed merch for an audience that's 18 and older.
00:15:50
Speaker
So you could say it was doing the kid old thing before, quote, kid old became a ah buzzword outside of the industry back channels. So long, long way of getting to the point of saying, yeah, um had some adventures.
00:16:06
Speaker
Well, it's it's always so interesting when we have guests on for the first time and like you know ask them to to tell their story about like how they – whether they're you know designing toys, whether they're marketing them, whether they're you know working just kind of in the industry in general.
00:16:22
Speaker
Everyone always seems to like find their way. you know like It's just it's like almost like it's meant to be, right? Like like you said – no matter where you go, tracing back to, you know, your earliest work, there's some sort of like cross section that either gets into licensing or gets into the actual toy stuff. So it's it was a matter of time.
00:16:43
Speaker
It's a big create your way industry. It is. And then there's another factor of that, that people always say you can't actually leave the toy industry because people try and then they get sucked back into it somehow.
00:16:59
Speaker
I can't tell you how many executives ive I've run into that maybe they're a VP or even a CEO of a toy company and They decide, hey, I'm going take this paycheck. I'm going to do something else and run some completely different company.
00:17:16
Speaker
And two, three years later, they pop up at another toy company because there is it is an industry and a business, but there is a community aspect of it.
00:17:27
Speaker
And so many people are friends. You think of. the adversaries and stuff
Challenges of U.S. Toy Manufacturing
00:17:33
Speaker
that exist within any business world. And those are certainly in the toy business.
00:17:38
Speaker
But overall, I think there's there's more of a collaborative community vibe where people really support each other. and And there's a few of them where you look back through the toy book archives and it's like we practically printed their resume because like people bounce around. Oh, this guy's at Mattel five years later. He's a Lego, you know that type of thing.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yep, yep. And we love seeing that, too, like, you know, especially around like the cons and stuff when when everyone is together, you know, or around the you know toy fairy. You follow enough people on social media, you'll see pictures of like, you know, people at the dinner where it's like, oh, look, there's, you know, this guy from Mattel sitting next to this guy from Hasbro sitting next to this guy from NECA.
00:18:19
Speaker
You know, it's just, it's, it's very, it, it, we do get that sense, you know, that, that, that there is a community and it's, it's fun to be even just a little bit. But of also like, we noticed that too, this year for like all of the like social media folks too, like,
00:18:36
Speaker
We at one point, we're all like, oh, yeah, we all know each other. Like as we're all waiting to go into like, oh, yeah, at the Hasbro thing at at yeah this year, it was like, oh, look, it's Pixel Dan and Dan Larson and it's Toy Shiz.
00:18:50
Speaker
And it's just like, oh, we're everybody's here. Yeah. Yeah. That was that was that was a lot of fun. yeah the other thing you mentioned The other thing you mentioned, though, James, is like, you know, you you kind of were, I want to say, like, the the... I actually will call it, like, the forefather kind of version of social media and, like, you know, YouTubing and streaming and stuff.
00:19:17
Speaker
Like, the charm that was... And the thing that I miss the most about TV, um public access was the best. Yeah. Like it was OG YouTube.
00:19:28
Speaker
I'm so like, and I'd be, I'd be hard pressed to call it otherwise. But like, I remember being a kid when I was a kid, there was such a charm. We had like uncle Floyd and stuff out here. Like there was such a charm to public access. And I feel like, like New York was the kind of like held onto it for as long as it can it could. Now it's finally like done, done, but there was just something great about public access.
00:19:54
Speaker
It was real TV. You could learn how... could learn real skills but you can that you could use and get paid for it.
00:20:05
Speaker
um It was YouTube before YouTube, and if you... sort of chart the lineage. Have you guys seen the documentary about Tom Green that just came out? I was just going to say tom Tom Green was, was kind of the first one to trans really transcend that. I mean,
Resilience and Recovery of the Toy Industry
00:20:20
Speaker
when I think of public access, I think of the movie UHF and like, you know, I think of the, the, the weird Al take on the whole thing, but, but yeah, I think of Floyd in, in real life. I mean, Tom, Tom Green was that, that one who really kind of jumped, right? Cause he had the, the, the, um, I haven't watched the documentary yet, but it,
00:20:38
Speaker
if I'm remembering correctly, he had a public access show in Canada, right? And that was where he got picked up from. Yeah. So if you look at, say I was doing, and I'm not going say like, Oh, I was first or whatever. Cause I wasn't, there were lots of other people that were doing different things and doing some great stuff out there. But I mean, I was,
00:20:58
Speaker
In Davenport, Iowa in 1992 doing that and then say late 90s, Tom Green's doing his thing in Canada. He gets picked up, comes to the States, becomes successful.
00:21:11
Speaker
on MTV then sort of pulls back. And after that show gets dropped, goes back to essentially doing cable access out of his house.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. The college streaming was brand new. So like just on the cusp of YouTube. And then there's a famous clip, which is now in the documentary, which is came in Joe Rogan.
00:21:37
Speaker
Um, sitting around and talking and Joe Rogan saying, um, that, uh, we got to figure out a way to monetize this.
00:21:49
Speaker
And boy, yeah that is true. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. That, that call in show there, uh, shouts to one of our favorite YouTubers, uh,
00:22:01
Speaker
it was uh wang just did one right yeah wang just did one on uh tom green versus 4chan yeah versus 4chan yeah the the original the original swat swatting event um yeah but yeah so i mean let let's pivot from uh you know from kind of your your history here to the landscape right now um so kind of what's the what's the general vibe you're getting from um manufacturers and and retailers heading into the the back half of the year
00:22:32
Speaker
I have never seen ah business environment with as many variables and wild cards as we have right now. So the industry itself is is very mixed where you have, I'm really seeing a lot of parallels ah to what happened during the pandemic.
00:22:54
Speaker
ah Today, and and keep in mind, by the time listeners hear this, whether it's six hours from now or tomorrow or the next day, this information could be totally different.
00:23:06
Speaker
That's how fast
Current Toy Trends and Upcoming Releases
00:23:07
Speaker
everything is moving and how many variables are at play here. So um in the pandemic, remember, the world went full stop and everybody thought, oh, sky is falling, we're all done.
00:23:20
Speaker
And then toys had record sales. So what's happened here in just the last couple days is a lot of my retail contacts are telling me foot traffic is up right now.
00:23:31
Speaker
Because now you've got people that are racing to make purchases to beat tariffs. So I went out tonight, couple hours ago, I went to a Meijer store, which is like a Walmart Supercenter type place we have in the Midwest.
00:23:44
Speaker
And um there's no price differences yet. it's all It's all pretty normal. um Because you've got figure a lot of the stuff that's on the shelf, you know there's no tariff on that. A lot of the stuff that's coming in, even if it was on the water level,
00:23:56
Speaker
on April 3rd, I believe it was, that stuff is safe. So there's a lot of products out there that there's no additional taxes on. But you have a lot of companies that have jumped into the rash decisions of, okay, we're going to cut back immediately. we're going to cut to staff.
00:24:17
Speaker
ah And they're doing that without even knowing all of the information yet. Because we've all seen the charts, the famous charts that President Trump showed with the different percentages for the different countries.
00:24:31
Speaker
And those are not only vastly different themselves, but they also stack. So you see a tariff on China that say is whatever, 34%, I think it was. And then that stacked on top of 20% was already there. So you're 54.
00:24:50
Speaker
And then they sort of go up and up and up from there to today, when the number being thrown out today is the absolutely absurd 104% tariff on China.
00:25:03
Speaker
um So you have a lot of lot of companies that are rightfully very concerned on what's going to happen. But The way the numbers play out, even if it was something basic, like just say a 20% tariff, you can't definitively say the product is going to cost the consumer 20% more.
00:25:27
Speaker
Because there are back channel things happening where people can play with it a little bit. The manufacturer, meaning the factory contracted by the toy company, could be wheeling and dealing,
00:25:40
Speaker
the toy company themselves. Maybe there's a distributor in the middle there. Maybe it's being exported by the retailer and the retailer's taking the brunt of that up front.
00:25:52
Speaker
Maybe it's not. Maybe the manufacturer's bringing it in and sending it to a warehouse. Maybe the tariff is being put on what they call the landed price, which is like the wholesale price coming in.
00:26:05
Speaker
All of these people, they don't know And when those charts came out, it was absolute chaos. It was, do I go from the landed price? Do I go from the MSRP?
00:26:16
Speaker
Does this stack? Does that stack? Does this category of product? Because there are thousands of categories. So within each segment, there's dozens of subcategories.
00:26:29
Speaker
So still today, I know one of the big revelations from this morning was that, oh, printed materials, like say, gaming guides that come out of China, not tariffed.
00:26:42
Speaker
um That could change tomorrow. But as of today, that line item wasn't there. So you have all these different people looking at even the pieces, like the ingredients of, um and the components of other toys where the toy itself might not be tariffed, but something used to make it may have been tariffed.
00:27:05
Speaker
Think about your metal. There's have you heard about the Venezuelan oil tariff? Have you heard about this? No. So there was another there was another set of tariffs from the Trump administration that went into effect just a couple days before this whole reciprocal tariff thing began.
00:27:25
Speaker
and it was that we were going to put a 20 percent duty on countries that were buying Venezuelan oil.
00:27:36
Speaker
So that becomes part of the stack too, because China buys Venezuelan oil. Got it. So what do they make plastic out of? um That's where it gets really, really complex. And I'm not an economist.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah. That's not my forte, but I can do simple math, as I think everybody else can. And what we're looking at right now is a huge, huge mess, um to to put it mildly.
00:28:08
Speaker
And
Upcoming Issues and Special Features
00:28:09
Speaker
at the end of the day, i mean, I do have some ideas of how it's going to play out, but um where we sit today is very confusing. and And I think, you know, I just want to put it out there, know, from the three of us that are all, you know, obviously you are a journalist. That's that is your as an editor in chief of of ah of the toy magazine, really.
00:28:32
Speaker
um You know, you are a journalist. We consider ourselves to be journalists. That's something that I i studied in in school. I was very passionate about it. What we're talking about here is not anything charged.
00:28:43
Speaker
You know, this is not we're we're not taking any kind of stances. This is purely talking about what is actually happening. I mean, these tariffs are very real. They have very real impacts.
00:28:55
Speaker
Whether or not there is long term plan that this is, you know, kind of a short term effect. Four,
James Zahn's Unique Collection
00:29:03
Speaker
that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what is what is happening in the moment and the impacts that is happening on this industry that we all love and care about.
00:29:12
Speaker
And our hobbies, the things that we love to buy, the companies that we support, the people at those companies who are you know now under duress you know from these things that are happening. So you know for the rest of this conversation, dear listener, just please keep that in mind as we as we kind of move forward and continue talking about this. Yeah.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, because we're seeing like, you know, things that you would never anticipate seeing just like kind of take a step back. I've never once seen like a company be like, yeah, we're going to put a hold on pre-orders because we need to see what's happening.
00:29:45
Speaker
And that's Nintendo. Like. Yep, that was that was legitimately shocking. like i when And it it was literally like literally hours. I don't even think it was a full day after that livestream when they said, they like actually, time we're not going to take pre which would be we're recording this on april 8th we're a little time stamp but um you know pre-orders were supposed to open tomorrow april 9th for the switch too i mean the sequel to one of the greatest gaming consoles you know most popular gaming consoles ever made and they're putting that on pause because of what's happening here so it's it's just it is wild so many variables
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, one of, of course, we're talking about it now, one of the big conversations is the announcement
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:30:38
Speaker
of the tariffs from from the current administration.
00:30:42
Speaker
um So what impact are you anticipating from, or even just kind of seeing the industry and even collectors start to take?
00:30:53
Speaker
I know you said you saw foot traffic up, but like, is is there anything kind of from the inside where it's like, hey, This is kind of what how we're prepping this. there There are different, and you you will hear this phrase, there are levers we can pull.
00:31:10
Speaker
And you hear that a lot on the big earnings calls, especially when Hasbro. there's There's what we call the big five, which are the publicly traded toy makers. So you've got Hasbro, Mattel, Funko, Jack Specific, and Spin Master.
00:31:28
Speaker
And you'll hear all the time on their earnings calls that they have these levers they can pull. And that used to really involve um moving production.
00:31:39
Speaker
Under normal circumstances, you look at the last decade or so, companies were already trying to diversify their supply chain. Going back to, I'd say Hasbro was probably among the first under the late Brian Goldner's leadership leadership.
00:31:57
Speaker
when they started to diversify out of China, not just because of cost and all that, a lot of theirs was actually IP related, particularly on the transformers line. They started relocating a lot of that production in Vietnam because at the time there was a lot going on in China where the industry would call it the second shift where you'd contract a factory and by day they're making your transformer.
00:32:24
Speaker
And then the second shift comes in and uses those molds and they make the demorphers or whatever. They're going to sell the bootleg version, the team you version. um They were trying to get a, get away from that, but they inadvertently got out in front of a bigger situation that was coming right behind it, which was the supply chain crisis that emerged during the pandemic.
00:32:48
Speaker
So you had all of these companies trying to, take production elsewhere and ah the complex stuff that collectors really enjoy, like things like a highly articulated action figure with photorealistic detail.
00:33:10
Speaker
The Chinese manufacturers have 40, 50, sometimes even 60 years experience making those types of products and doing it at scale, doing it quickly.
00:33:24
Speaker
doing it for a reasonable cost. And that's that's because of the decisions that were made many administrations ago, many corporate leaders ago that decided, hey, we're gonna we're going to move production to Asia.
00:33:40
Speaker
And keep in mind too, there are certain toys that have always been made Over there, you can even, i mean, pull up pull up your old Hot Wheels and stuff from the 60s. Oh, yeah. A handful of them were made in the U.S., s but you'd always see, like, made in Malaysia or something like that. um Lots of toys from the 60s and 70s were made in Hong Kong.
00:34:02
Speaker
um But really in the 70s and into the 80s is where everything just went offshore. And then the EPA regulations came in. i don't i don't think a lot of people realize that there are certain types of chemicals in different types of plastics that you just can't legally use here to from a production standpoint.
00:34:23
Speaker
um And but i know it's one of the questions we've put on the list, but when we talk about reshoring or nearshoring production or bringing things back to the states, one of the big reasons why you can't do that is pollution.
00:34:39
Speaker
oh you know you think about the days of old like think about all that stock footage you see from the 70s of the refineries and the smoke and the smog and all that stuff and i hate to say it but that's actually what's happening on the other side of the world and it was sent over there but in in the meantime those people got really really good at what they do and when companies tried to move production elsewhere, ah it was other countries over there that were taking that factory capacity, Vietnam, Indonesia, India,
00:35:15
Speaker
And then the back channel thing that, but again, it's one of these things I don't think most people realize is some of those people that own factories in those other countries are actually Chinese because they're the people that have the expertise and they're going somewhere else to put them there. So regardless what your opinion is on it, political or otherwise, just from a simple standpoint of Can this be done?
00:35:45
Speaker
No, you cannot flip a switch and move production somewhere else. And now a word from our sponsors.
00:35:58
Speaker
This segment is brought to you by our friends at Chubsy Wubsy Toys. A traditional mom and pop toy store in Little Falls, New Jersey, Chubsy Wubsy Toys brings you the best new toys from the brands you love without the hassle of pounding the pavement searching for them at larger retail stores.
00:36:15
Speaker
Visit them in person at their brand new home at 101 Newark Pompton Turnpike Suite 1 in Little Falls, New Jersey, or online at chubzywubzy.com.
00:36:27
Speaker
That's
00:36:33
Speaker
And tell them Adventures in Collecting sent you.
00:36:39
Speaker
And now, back to the show.
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's one of the big, you know, kind of questions and, and, you know, whether whether it's toys or, or, or elsewhere, right. It's, you know, specialized labor.
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah. Bringing, bringing that back to the United States, you know, what does that, at first of all, you know, is that even possible? Is it, is it logistically feasible and what does that ultimately do to, to a cost? So like, you know, keeping it within the conversation here, know, I,
00:37:13
Speaker
I can grab any one of these figures that's near me, right? Like we got like a a wrestling figure from Mattel. We got a Marvel legends from Asbro. If you know, these are equal in price, right? They're right in that like $24 range MSRP, right? yeah What happens to the cost of one of these toys? If miraculously they open a factory in the United States and start producing toys here, like what, what does that do for the consumer?
00:37:40
Speaker
All right, I'm going to go twofold on that and go spin it back to the pulling of the levers. So one of the levers, of course, is moving production elsewhere. Another one would be changing up your packaging, which becomes a thing, too. Like, I actually know a couple companies that are already doing this where they're going to a retailer and they're presenting them with three packaging options. And it's like this one has more stuff, this one has less stuff, and this one is practically just the toy with a tag on it.
00:38:10
Speaker
that cuts a little bit. Um, and you work into all of these different things. Now, a figure like you just showed me, I, I would actually just say outright, you cannot make a figure like that of that quality in the U S period.
00:38:29
Speaker
And if you could, you're looking at a 60, $70 figure. um Part of it is simply scale. And i ironically, i actually have i actually have a six-inch scale figure somewhere in this office that um is from a small manufacturer, and it is $60 on Amazon right now.
00:38:53
Speaker
And it's not made in the U.S., but just from a scale perspective, you need to sell so many of these things. um to set up production here, and we'll say just solely in this action figure realm, you would need billions of dollars of infrastructure.
00:39:14
Speaker
So you'd have to build the factory. And we're talking not just building the factory. You need to buy the land. You need to get the utilities in there. You need to get all your permitting. You build the factory.
00:39:25
Speaker
Then you need to get the equipment to run the factory. Well, guess what? Not made here. Most of that's made in China too. Mm-hmm. Then you need the tooling. Oh, guess what? We don't have places that make tooling.
00:39:38
Speaker
Most of that's made over there too. So you can still get it. You can order it from them, ship it here. You're going to set that stuff up. Then where is your labor force going to come from?
00:39:50
Speaker
There are There are some factories. There are toys made in the U.S. It's not stuff that the collector's market is going to go after. And we can discuss it later if you'd like. I can tell you all about who makes stuff here and what those things are.
00:40:05
Speaker
But if in this um imaginary world we're opening the action figure factory, who is going to operate this machinery?
00:40:16
Speaker
And of course, you want to pay them a living wage. So What are we talking? $20 an hour, 25, maybe 30 to do what folks over in Asia, sadly, are doing for pennies on the dollar, but they're going to have to do these jobs. And if they're running factory lines, it's heavy, maybe hot work, maybe you know maybe there's fumes and smells. Again, we're talking EPA stuff here, not even allowed to use most of these concoctions, but if you could, they'd be running all of that.
00:40:48
Speaker
Then you're looking at Say your tampos, your paint applications. Who's going to be sitting there painting the faces on or stamping this stuff? um What school do we have here in the U.S. that's even teaching kids that skilled trades are an option for them?
00:41:08
Speaker
um So many things. and that Fortunately, there are some movements going on, and it takes the conversation elsewhere. But there are some organizations out there trying to bring back the trades a little bit.
00:41:19
Speaker
But um it's not like it was in, say, the 50s or 60s where you might live in a factory town yeah and your dad is making enough to have the nice house and the nice car and put the family of four and you know in all the things and the kids through school. And then Johnny grows up and he goes and gets a job at the factory, too, and he's taken care of forever.
00:41:43
Speaker
That just doesn't happen. It's like a... like a glimpse of the past from a different timeline and you can't do it. But if you could, so you got get all these people in there, pay them a decent wage.
00:41:57
Speaker
And then you got to look at the expensive of packaging and everything else too. And then go, okay, so my 1999 figure, which is already overpriced.
00:42:10
Speaker
ah Now we got to sell it for 60 bucks, 70. seventy So you're going to sell less of them. It becomes a huge mess. And the reality is that say everything else outside of labor works, it's all automation.
00:42:31
Speaker
So it's going to be robots anyway. So you bring production back to the U.S. and you're not creating American jobs. You're creating an assembly line of robots.
00:42:43
Speaker
And there are companies that are doing this. There was just a story. And actually, if you go back, they're they're great people. and they And they've done this almost every time that there's been an issue over the past decade.
00:42:56
Speaker
Crazy art. um They're known for their puzzles. And um they own the biggest pencil factory in the world that I believe is in Tennessee. ah They own a bunch of facilities. And they they opened a huge spot down in Jacksonville, Florida a couple years ago.
00:43:13
Speaker
they keep increasing their US manufacturing capacity. Those jobs are not human beings. um And anybody that tells you otherwise is mistaken. They're theyre doing it with automation.
00:43:29
Speaker
And even overseas, the the business there is going to automation. If you want to look into who's really killing it on that right now,
00:43:41
Speaker
is Zuru. You guys know them? Yep. They make X shots and the the five surprise and all of that. They, um, many people don't know that Zuru doesn't just do toys. They, uh, they have a arm called Zuru tech.
00:43:57
Speaker
They have a housing, the housing. I was just going to say the housing company is that website is unreal. The, the, yeah you can build your own house and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they are the fastest growing maker of diapers. Um,
00:44:11
Speaker
Um, they, they're doing health and beauty products, but, uh, where they are really excelling is that they have these skilled teams and keep in mind, this is a company too, that is from New Zealand.
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah. But their people in Asia are like the best of the best when it comes to developing super efficient automated production.
00:44:35
Speaker
And that's how, you look at what they've done in the blaster category with X shot versus nerf. How do you make a product like that and take market share by producing something that's comparable, if not better in quality at a more affordable price, you do it with the best robots in the world and that's what they're doing.
00:45:01
Speaker
So if somebody could crack that, And bring that to the states, you might get the efficiency, but again, you're just not getting the jobs. And you still need the money to do it, the capital actually something like that. The capital, yeah, the startup. And that's the other part of it is like what – of the big five, right? Like the companies that publicly traded, like how do you even get board approval to spend that amount of money on something that – is potentially going to only make things worse.
00:45:33
Speaker
And they don't like, where's it going to go too is. They also don't have the the capital. They honestly do not have the capital. It would, it would require massive outside investment.
00:45:47
Speaker
And there are there are just so many other factors too. Like the the thing that concerns me most is that we talk about,
00:46:00
Speaker
reshoring or nearshoring and everyone would love to see a strong economy to see American job growth.
00:46:12
Speaker
Now we see it. If you're watching this on video, I have a big flag behind me because, yeah you know, the, the American flag, um, it means a lot of things to a lot of people.
00:46:23
Speaker
Um, and it can be polarizing now, but I look at it as a symbol of like you know ah the greatness that has happened and then of course too like the possibilities of what things could become here and it would be fantastic to have everybody have just a high paying job and all of this and manufacturing is not it but what ends up getting lost in this shuffle with the tariffs and the taxes and the arguments when it pertains to the toy industry specifically is that
00:46:57
Speaker
I say the toy industry is kind of like Apple. Everybody looks at their iPhone box when you get it, and it says, designed in California, made in China. Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
The U.S. toy industry, even though the toy industry is a global business, the U.S. toy industry is, i mean, just, it's powering billions of dollars in the American economy that is...
00:47:26
Speaker
ah largely staffed by by people that are not on the manufacturing side. They're doing design and marketing and all the corporate jobs and everything. And it filters down to...
00:47:41
Speaker
the guys and the men and women that are loading the trucks and the longshoremen that are unloading the ships when they come in and the folks work on the rails. Cause we ship a lot of toys from the ports on the coast. it It goes across the country on the rails, the truckers. There are so many different people that are within this ecosystem, myself included, and my team that, um,
00:48:08
Speaker
They have these jobs because all of this other stuff exists. And we are a creative were a creative economy filled with bright, creative people.
00:48:23
Speaker
But that manual labor for making those things, again, it was really the decisions of people decades ago that put us in this position we are today.
00:48:38
Speaker
And if it took us decades to get here, it'll take us decades to get out of this. And that, I just don't think that's registering at the at the upper echelon of our government.
00:48:53
Speaker
And of course, to toys and collectibles, this is a discretionary category too. This is not something that is essential. um That's very important to keep in mind.
00:49:06
Speaker
And You guys know it and I know it. that are There are people that are very passionate about all of this. And passion sometimes leads to blockheadedness.
00:49:18
Speaker
And just, I want to get that figure. I want to get this at an affordable price. I want it on my shelf. And it crosses over into this sense of entitlement. And the reality is, like, you are entitled to nothing.
00:49:31
Speaker
You're entitled to either buy it if you want it and have the means to do so or not. That it's harsh, but that is the reality at the end of the day.
00:49:43
Speaker
And I will say like a lot of these price increases and we were seeing price increases before this tariff stuff happened. Yeah. um Um, strongly believe that no one is sitting out there in a boardroom going, we're going to get another $3 for this black series figure this week.
00:50:05
Speaker
I do not believe that is the case. Um, Prices have gone up because factors have pushed them in that direction. And again, every company is different as well. And we talk, go back to the lever pulling thing.
00:50:20
Speaker
Look at, ah look at how a company like Playmates can sell you a $9.99 Ninja Turtle that I don't know how much articulation it has, but it feels like a lot.
00:50:31
Speaker
yeah And then you have another company that sells a comparable product and it's twice that. um there there's licensing fees piled on top that are different for everyone.
00:50:44
Speaker
There's um different design fees that go into this stuff. There's packaging considerations. There's minimum guarantees that go in. So you never know what's going in, going on behind the scenes. And then of course, volume.
00:50:57
Speaker
So um they're probably selling a lot more of the $9.99 turtle the $20 wrestler. That of stuff. that type of stuff no So, you know, we talked about the like bigger, you know, publicly traded companies um and the lever pulling, but how are smaller independent toy companies navigating this?
00:51:23
Speaker
um what What have you heard on that end?
00:51:28
Speaker
The smaller guys are having a real tough time and they're going to have a tough time. I would imagine that some of them are not going to make it through this.
00:51:39
Speaker
I've already seen some canceled projects, which I'm sure you guys have too. yeah i've seen I've seen a couple crowdfunding projects get canceled that were already announced.
00:51:51
Speaker
I'm aware of a couple that have been canceled that weren't announced already. um There are some lines that should should start hitting retail this summer.
00:52:04
Speaker
that'll probably get pushed to fall, maybe even get pushed into 26. Again, this is very similar to some of that pandemic stuff we we saw where things just keep getting put off on the horizon because if the order's not placed already, why place it right now when you yeah when you know that there might be this tax on it? Because the smaller manufacturers are at greater risk of being able to afford the product and not being able to afford the taxes on it.
00:52:34
Speaker
So the tariff, tariff is a tax. It comes in, if they're on the hook for that, they might not have the upfront capital to do that. And then they may also too, because the margins are thin to begin with, the the tariff may completely put them in the negative, where they're they're bringing in ah a product at a loss.
00:52:58
Speaker
and there's ways that retailers and bigger manufacturers can play with that sort of, it's like the grocery trick where you raise the price on one item or a category of items to offset your loss leader, like, you know, your bread and milk and eggs.
00:53:18
Speaker
Theoretically, eggs eggs are a commodity right now, too. What's the phrase? You're you're robbing robbing Peter to pay Paul. Right. um yeah But grocery, that's part of the business. you yeah You raise the price of this, and if we were we were in the 80s, I'd say it's okay.
00:53:35
Speaker
We add $10 to Snake Mountain so we can still sell our Motu figure for $5. that That's the way you would kind of play it, you know? Yeah. And to an extent, there may be some companies doing that. I and just saw, and I won't see what the item is, but we just had, because we're we're in production right now, we're in production on two new issues of the toy book, an issue of the Pop Insider and a Toy Insider spring-summer gift guide.
00:54:05
Speaker
And for us, this gets to be all kinds of fun because people have submitted products that appear in our publications and they have an MSRP with them. And now they're reevaluating those MSRPs. Well, one of my colleagues just sent me an email the other day from somewhere in the collector space. And I'll tell you that this, this is a pop insider thing.
00:54:28
Speaker
There was a higher end product that was supposed to cost two 50 and the MSRP has now changed. $3.29, I believe. cheese That was going to be my guess. yeah that That's like a 30-31% increase.
00:54:47
Speaker
yeah um Now, something like that, of course, it sucks. But if somebody's already spending hundreds of dollars, it might be easier for them to stomach than somebody that has watched their favorite figure line go from 20 bucks to 30 bucks over the past five, six years.
00:55:10
Speaker
yeah um You start pricing people out and certainly takes a lot of the fun out. And then realistically, because what we do as well, I mean, we're serving the entire toy industry and all everybody in it from baby toys up to there. There's a fun new one too. If you talk about kiddals, there's now this silver market.
00:55:36
Speaker
oh which last year, last year, people were calling it elder tainment. And now they're starting to say, eat that now they're starting to say the silver market, um which is 49 and up.
00:55:49
Speaker
um So um
00:55:54
Speaker
we cover all of it and where it's really going to hurt people is, is not, not all of us that want to collect something and have it all on the shelf. Like I have behind me and you guys do too.
00:56:09
Speaker
ah It's people that want to buy stuff for their kids. Yeah. Because regardless of all, every time I hear, I get it every couple of weeks, you know, oh kids don't play with toys anymore.
00:56:22
Speaker
ah Not true. They don't in the way that they did previously. And they might not as much as we'd like them to, but traditional toys still sell tens of billions of dollars worth of toys a year that are enjoyed by kids.
00:56:37
Speaker
um They don't necessarily play with them as long as we'd like. They age out of things quicker. But when you look at a mom or dad or say grandparents that maybe they're on a fixed budget, they buy for the same amount of kids every year.
00:56:54
Speaker
they're really going to start seeing it during the holidays where you might not see it on one toy that you go out to buy today. But when you put it all together, you might realize, Hey, I'm getting less for more or I'm spending the same and I'm definitely getting way less.
00:57:11
Speaker
Oh, and that's, that's a disheartening thing. um The other, the other thing you can factor into that is a little bit unique to the toy industry is that in some cases, know,
00:57:23
Speaker
And again, not collector, more traditional toys. um There's no benchmark with this year's toys versus last year's toys because a lot of them didn't exist because the industry thrives on newness.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah. So for certain things, like say there's say there's a super hot item like I know you guys loved the Disney Stitch last year, which I do. Yes. The Puppetronic. Yeah. um So they have the Angel now.
00:57:50
Speaker
So, yeah. so But say that say something like that comes along that's just like the hot toy of this year, but it didn't exist last year. So you can't say, oh, it's $75 now and it was $60 last year.
00:58:03
Speaker
There's no comparison. Yeah. little bit of that gets to be played with too, but we get back to this 104% thing. We're all in ah in a big big yeah big pile Nice way to say it.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I think i want to transition to another topic, but I want want to just kind of put a bow on this. Right. And we'll shift to something a little more positive to to end to end our our chat here. But, you know, I think.
00:58:35
Speaker
Like you said, it's it's volatile. I think we just need to kind of all keep an eye on it. You know, um if if the pandemic taught us anything, right, is like the knee-jerk reaction is not necessarily the the right reaction. um You know, just...
00:58:51
Speaker
be cautious, keep an eye on it, you know, and, and as we tell people on, you know, on our Instagram feed all the time, you know, as we're, we're sharing the news and everything is, as stuff comes out, um you know, just stay within your means, you know, yeah it's do what you can do what you can find joy in what's in what you can enjoy. And,
00:59:12
Speaker
and you know, there's a lot out there. It still remains to be, you know, the best time we're, we're in ah a gilded age of, of collectibles. I mean, it's never been ah cooler time to be a, an adult collector of toys. i mean, that stuff looks like, I always tell people, right. It,
00:59:30
Speaker
when we were kids and we played with the action figures that we had, our imaginations, you know, kind of helped us sell the things that we were trying to make them do. And like, now they can actually do those things, you know, like they can move the way that we wish they did. They look the way that they, you know, we wish they did. It's they have, yeah. Like wrestlers just had were statuesque.
00:59:50
Speaker
So I, you know, it's just, Focus on the good stuff, right? You know, i am it might mean like even just like, hey, stuff sits for a little bit. Like, yeah, maybe that's what happens. We don't know.
01:00:03
Speaker
Like, we really don't know. So I think what's going to happen here, I'll tell you my my spidey s sense on this is that. I believe this is all going to blow over. It's the it's the George Harrison thing. All things must pass.
01:00:18
Speaker
ah This will pass the toy industry. as As we know it has been around about 120 years. um Disney thing.
01:00:29
Speaker
Years ago, i I remember during the pandemic, Bob Iger saying on a conference call, you know, this this company, meaning Disney, is has been through actual war. sent We've sent people to war. There have been bigger bigger problems out there.
01:00:46
Speaker
um This will pass. I don't believe that – I actually think that the majority of these tariffs are going to come back down very, very quickly because we're already seeing – like Vietnam's already come to the table. and They're like, hey, we'll go 0% if you guys go 0%.
01:01:03
Speaker
So they want in. There's like 50 other countries that have come up that that want to negotiate. End of the day, it's going to become a just a button-heads battle between the U.S. and China.
01:01:15
Speaker
It's been building to this. it's important to remember that, Hey, this is about our governments. Um, it's not about the citizens. Um, it's not about everybody's politics.
01:01:27
Speaker
It's really about the administrations. There are good people in China, just like there's good people in the U S um, hardworking people that want to make a good living and take care of their kids. Um, it will come back down.
01:01:41
Speaker
How long are we going to fight with China on this? No one can answer that. Yeah. Um, But there are other options out there. You guys also pegged it too. You live within your means.
01:01:52
Speaker
um And then anytime too. I mean, we love this stuff, but it can also cross into an unhealthy ah point of addiction with the collectibles. A few folks don't want to, don't want to admit that. But I, I remember a conversation a year or two, in exchange I had with pixel Dan, which was that like, Hey, you know,
01:02:13
Speaker
if What happens if you kick it and your HasLab hasn't arrived yet? Who's going to deal with that thing when it shows up on the porch ah a year after year after you're gone? Nobody wants say it, but you know what? Nope.
01:02:28
Speaker
That happens. Um, looking at my cell barge right now, as you say that, the list staring at it all over here. I showed you guys before the call that I had a pile off to the one side of my desk because I've been so busy. i still have my his tank and my dragonfly sitting there.
01:02:44
Speaker
They are not, I have not even cut the factory tape on the boxes that they come in. And I, I want to set them up and display them and, uh, you know, play with my figures, but, uh, that's, uh,
01:02:58
Speaker
It just hasn't happened yet. I'll get there. But there are much more important things in the world. We're just all fortunate that we get to continue being kids ah to an extent.
01:03:11
Speaker
And whether you want to say the kid alt thing or not, but the adult collector, again, adult collector has existed forever. People just didn't have a buzzword to put on it. But we're fortunate that we get to do this and we get to live in this time.
01:03:25
Speaker
Now we just have to put up with a bunch of other people for a little bit and cross our fingers that it'll all be okay. But I will tell you this, most of us will still be around here this time next year and we'll be laughing about it.
01:03:43
Speaker
I hope so. So speaking of laughing about things and enjoying things, um one of the things that you do, and you you alluded to it earlier in the conversation, is you go to a lot of events, you know whether that's Licensing Expo, whether that's all the different conventions, the events, the absolutely wonderful events with incredible food and sometimes fake Snoop Dogg that we absolutely love going to every year. um So you see a lot of different you know, I'll cross paths with a lot of different makers, a lot of different toy brands, a lot of different toy lines.
01:04:17
Speaker
um What's like in the past, you know, we're in Q2 now. So like so far this year, has there been any kind of sleeper hit or like an under the radar toy line that you've been surprised by or that's wowed you in your in your travels?
01:04:36
Speaker
First off, let me give a shout out to the Snoop dupe. If you don't know him, his his real name is Eric Finch. He's a SAG actor. You can find him on Instagram. He does a lot of a lot of really cool stuff and is a good dude. And yes, he he does look.
01:04:53
Speaker
Wait, quite familiar that LBC. Yeah. So. they yeah so You know, um but good dude. And yeah, he was at one of our events last year and was pretty awesome. But as far as for his sleeper hits, there's nothing yet.
01:05:13
Speaker
That that I would say would resonate with the collector audience. There's a lot of really, there's a lot of really, there's a lot of really buzzy products out there.
01:05:27
Speaker
um one of which is on the outer cover of the latest toy book, which I think you guys have, there's gooey gooey from the folks at moose toys. It is a slime, but it's a slime for like the Ulta beauty Sephora kid. Um, that, uh, it's got, it's got a very pleasing texture, like skincare and stuff is actually ah a trend in toys right now, especially with,
01:05:51
Speaker
tween and teen girls. um It's got quality scents, a nice ah um nice texture to it, nice feel. And I'm not even like ah like a slime enthusiast or whatever the compounds, but I dig what they got going.
01:06:05
Speaker
And you can make some some cool things. I think Crazy Art has a really cool line of these crystal gem creations. It's sort of sort of a completely different spin on like what lego botanicals was doing like you're building you're building a plant which uh look at gardening and botanicals as an overall toy trend this year interesting across the board um there is a play-doh
01:06:38
Speaker
potting set. So you get the brown pay to play dough. That's your dirt. You're planting the flowers. There's real greenhouses that are like toddler and preschool size that you can put outside, teach the kids about growing in their own food. um John Deere is actually one of the fastest growing licenses amazing for toys, which you can find all kinds of stuff with that. But it's a compounds are big this year.
01:07:05
Speaker
um the the gardening, also food play, is another big thing this year. But I think, I think there is, you want to say something that, and maybe I, maybe I told you guys this at one point, but I think the big surprise for collectors is going to come from MGA.
01:07:30
Speaker
And I can't tell you anything more than that. Okay. All right. Um, and I, Aside from, I will add one more thing. They have two brands on the horizon.
01:07:47
Speaker
One, you might be able to find some information about in more of a general form, but you haven't seen the products yet. And the other one, kid you not, no one outside of perhaps the retail buyers that have placed orders know that this thing exists.
01:08:07
Speaker
And when it finally comes out, I will tell you i will tell you this was the thing. And I'll see if you guys agree with me on it. All right.
01:08:20
Speaker
But the end of this year, knock on wood... That company, which everybody thinks of with their dolls and their preschool stuff, is basically going to be in every aisle of the toy department.
01:08:32
Speaker
So here's the thing that I find very interesting about what you just said. So friend of the pod, formerly of Jazzwares, Greg Mitchell. Yep.
01:08:43
Speaker
Is is. found his way over to MGA and i was wondering what he might be up to over there. And now that, that move makes a whole lot more sense knowing his background.
01:08:57
Speaker
believe you could say he found his way back. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he was there previously and he's not the only one. It's not the only one that's there.
01:09:08
Speaker
Um, they have some talented folks that have, uh, that popped up in Chatsworth and, uh, think mr isaac larian would be okay with me stopping at that okay we'll leave it at that big things big things um yeah um so that that i would say would be you talk about uh under the radar uh that would be be kind of under the radar um so that stuff is really good um
01:09:40
Speaker
There was a lot of stuff I saw in Nuremberg. I was at Spielbarn Messe, which for folks that aren't familiar with that, that is the biggest Toy Fair on the planet.
01:09:51
Speaker
So to put it in perspective, Toy Fair in New York, which was fantastic this year, I thought. I hope you guys had a good time. Yeah, it was great. it was great um great the um So there was a lot of embargoed stuff at Toy Fair New York, too, that you couldn't couldn't take pictures of, can't tell anybody about. Mm-hmm.
01:10:08
Speaker
um So to put it in perspective, I think Toy Fair New York had about 850 exhibitors this year. Svilvara and Mesa had 2,700. Oh, my goodness. so across physical prowess.
01:10:24
Speaker
twelve or thirteen halls um and it was it's a test of physical prowess to just say be my knees hurt my knees hurt just thinking about that let's say dave are we going to nuremberg next year we could yeah um ah surprisingly i ran into dan larson in nuremberg came around the corner and it was like dude you know i saw that he was there yeah yeah that was super cool yeah yeah so um So that place is awesome.
01:10:55
Speaker
And um you see a lot of stuff that is not available here that I would love to see some U.S. retailers take a shot on. um They have pretty much like every category you could imagine.
01:11:11
Speaker
And then just so many variations on it. I mean, one whole haul, for example, was just wooden toys. And... You think of like the wooden toys we see here for like a preschooler, you know, yeah the little blocks and car. Melissa and Doug type stuff. Yeah. um But the craftsmanship and stuff that is just super beautiful. And again, you cross over to like, oh, I can see that just like sitting on my shelf or on my coffee table or whatever.
01:11:41
Speaker
the Toys is art. Art is toys. um Really, really cool stuff. um one of One of my favorite items that I saw over there. And I immediately said, somebody is going to knock this off tomorrow. And then I did see a variation of said item in New York, um, from a different company.
01:12:02
Speaker
Whammo has a, has a fog bubble machine coming out next year that, um, there's, there's fog in the bubbles and you can as bubbles, fog or both.
01:12:14
Speaker
And when they kid they when they hit the ground, they look like a ghost, like dissipating. Um, Yeah, was pretty. ah Sometimes the simple, simple ideas are the best ones.
01:12:25
Speaker
For sure. Good for the kids and good for the bands, too. Yes. But I mean, I was in Europe a year ago and I was like floored by how much stuff like I saw there that wasn't here, like ah in London, just like the amount of die cast and stuff like that.
01:12:44
Speaker
So I can only imagine just what else is out there. They love diecast. I, I was in the press lounge at Spilvarenmessa and I met a guy from Italy and I don't recall his name right now. And, um, he didn't, he didn't speak as fluid of English as many of the folks over there do. I mean, most of the folks over there speak better English than my neighbors, you know? Um,
01:13:13
Speaker
he uh but he was telling me uh as best he can and with a childlike childlike sense of whimsy that uh he's from italy and he only covers diecast cars and that's it and that was his whole reason for going to germany and he was going to see as many diecast vehicles as he possibly could and go back and report on them and i was like that's that is passion and that's what it's all about um um and There's a lot of growth in that category to look what look at the big Ferrari and Hot Wheels announcement this week and everything.
01:13:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah. All the f one stuff. Yeah. Yeah. F1 is is like the hottest thing going right now. Yeah. Especially with like Lewis Hamilton with them. Yeah. So before we head into our final question, James, we're we're reaching the end of our our interview here. Yeah.
01:14:07
Speaker
What's coming up ah for the toy book and ah and what kind of industry coverage should ah should our listeners and and watchers ah keep an eye out for from you?
01:14:18
Speaker
Sure. So the toy book now publishes, we actually increased the frequency last year. We publish seven issues a year in print. And our next issue comes out. So we just, I'll back this up. We just released,
01:14:34
Speaker
our annual big book. We call it the big toy book, which traditionally has come out every February at Toy Fair, New York, going back again to the beginning of the call when we said first print edition came out February of 85. So February of 25 became actually March 1st because that's when Toy Fair was this year.
01:14:56
Speaker
ye So we released the big toy book. And in addition to in-depth features and exclusive commentary, that one has nearly 600 new toys and games that are coming out this year across all categories.
01:15:12
Speaker
May 20th, we're going to release the licensing and entertainment plus baby issue of the toy book because licensing expo and ABC kids expo overlap this year.
01:15:26
Speaker
They are both at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and they are the same week, and they're in adjacent halls. So you can go right and go to Licensing Expo or go left and go to ABC Kids Expo, and there's a huge convergence there because ABC Kids, people used to think of it as just a baby show. Well, they there's a lot of toys going in there because a specialty toy market, ah your little boutique stores and independent retailers,
01:15:54
Speaker
A lot of specialty toy stores are carrying baby. lot of baby boutiques starting to carry more toys. ah Got to get the kids while they're young, you know, and create those lifelong toy fans.
01:16:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And so that's going to be really cool. So it's like you're going to go in licensing expo and you're going to see all the big gong. It's Pokemon, Lego, Hasbro, Mattel, Jazzwares. They're all in the house.
01:16:17
Speaker
You go next door and then retailers are going to the ABC Kids Expo and they'll see people like Robins Burger is going to be there and Radio Flyer and all kinds of good stuff. So I'm excited for that.
01:16:31
Speaker
Then just because of the way the dates come together about two weeks later, we're going to drop the specialty toys and gifts issue, which debuts at Astra Marketplace and Academy in San Antonio in June. And for those that don't know, Astra is the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association.
01:16:52
Speaker
um They Represent tons specialty toy stores across the U.S., but also ah picking up a lot of steam in Canada. So they're getting ah quite a few members up there. They put on a trade show every year called Marketplace and Academy. it moves to a different city every year.
01:17:10
Speaker
so we're going to have that coming. ah Two issues following those that I think will have a lot of crossover appeal, especially for folks listening to the pod right now, are Action Adventure issue, which is the second time we've done this. We debuted it last year. That's going to debut July 31st.
01:17:30
Speaker
We're going to have copies of that available actually at Gen Con for free alongside the new issue the Pop Insider dropping there too. um That one's going to have all kinds of action figures, vehicles, outdoor toys, like the name says, action and adventure together. That was a great issue last year. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And then September, I'll be back in l L.A. and we're going to drop.
01:17:54
Speaker
the 2025 LA fall toy preview issue, which is now it's shaped up to where it's almost like we do two big books a year. One comes out for toy fair at the beginning of the year. And then LA previews is equally large. So that's going to have a lot of forward looking 2026 stuff.
01:18:13
Speaker
But, um, I will tell you that, uh, next month's issue, the may issue, uh, there's some cool stuff in there. We're doing a deep dive on the relaunch and, um,
01:18:25
Speaker
packaging design for the new Power Rangers. the Power Rangers. Awesome. Very cool. Reignition. Reignition. Reignition. um But yeah, so the the guys that, the guy that runs the design firm that did all of the new Power Rangers branding and all of the packaging design is actually Ted Manini, the guy that writes the outside the box column for the toy book. Oh, so cool. So it took a little while. we wanted We wanted to do that one in the big book, but that required layers of approval to tell that story because it's a Hasbro brand being made by Playmates Toys, and then you got third party involved with it.
01:19:06
Speaker
So we're finally telling that story and we're going to show some of those visuals. Um, so that's a lot of fun because it is licensing and entertainment. We've got a really cool jaws 50th anniversary product line feature, how to train your dragon.
01:19:21
Speaker
and we've got the Disney stitch splosion in there. We have a sweet feature about, um, music merchandising and, uh, some of the folks in that space and McFarland, super seven Funko, et cetera, and the licensing agents that work behind that. And then, um we do an annual feature that's the hot kids brands.
01:19:44
Speaker
So it's licenses and, uh, franchises and stuff that are either new and emerging, just super hot for some reason, or are,
01:19:56
Speaker
becoming the the new evergreen staples, like you think, like ah like a Bluey or that type of thing. But we've got some got some really cool brands in there and lots of interviews and stuff. So, team's working hard on it. And alongside that, we got Spring Issue of the Pop Insider is also debuting at Licensing Expo. And that one just has...
01:20:19
Speaker
all kinds of collectibles. um We got fandom finds. where Our thing with Pop Insider, we always say fuel your fandom. yeah There's something for everybody in there. It's basically like You look through and it's like, yeah, I would like that and that and that and have all the stuff that's in our, you know, for for us. I'm just saying like us here on on the show right now.
01:20:44
Speaker
We would very much enjoy a lot of the things. I've got the the the big the big toy book that's currently still sitting on my counter in my kitchen. it has has sticky notes all over it from my my daughter who...
01:20:57
Speaker
as soon as it came in the mail, she was like, I want this. Oh, I i love that. i mean I miss when my kids, it how, how old is your daughter? She'll be 10 in September. So, okay. See my, I got, I got teenagers now. So um I do miss those days when, when you could do that. But yeah, the, ah the big book, which I, which I have right here for those, those of you watching this on video. Yeah. So many, so many great toys in here. It really is.
01:21:25
Speaker
Which, ah you know, i'm looking through here and it's like, yeah, there's a few things like I want this wave to biker mice, you know? Yeah. That type of thing. Thundercats. Moe to you.
01:21:36
Speaker
It's it's funny because like, you know, Maddie and Callie would want to do would want some similar things, but some completely different. things Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My yeah, my four year old wants. I mean, I just bought her a Beetlejuice Tooney Terrors the other day in in Walmart. She wants the spooky, creepy stuff. Godzilla. Daddy bears, Godzilla, all that good stuff.
01:21:55
Speaker
So, James, we have a tradition here on the show. um We have a final question that we ask all of our guests as kind of our send off here. ah Dave, ah would you like to fulfill your role as this podcast's James Lipton and ask our final question?
01:22:13
Speaker
Well, yes, I would. So our final question that we ask all of our guests, James, what is your favorite and or strangest piece in your collection? It can be one of each or it can be both. Hmm.
01:22:31
Speaker
This is this is one to stump. Well. going to probably go with the most obvious thing that is in my office ah in terms of.
01:22:46
Speaker
It's not strangest, but it's the most unique. I actually own, depending on how you want to look at it, one of, if not the rarest Transformers in the world.
01:23:00
Speaker
And it is the handmade chrome Optimus Prime from the 2007 Michael Bay Transformers movie. made by the Hasbro design team for G4's Attack of the Show.
01:23:14
Speaker
And it's sitting about five feet from me right now you know in a case. i And so that is probably the most valuable thing that I have, too, because I don't...
01:23:29
Speaker
i'm I'm very particular and in terms of like what I buy for myself. Like if you see behind me, I've got a lot of classifieds behind me. I really like that line. um And then I, I tend to pick up like odds and ends.
01:23:41
Speaker
Like I, I, I'm not a completist. oh Yeah. Which I was once upon a time, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when I went way overboard when they brought star Wars back in the,
01:23:54
Speaker
mid nineties and had an entire star Wars room at my house. And so I got tired of moving it a few times and sold all of it. um Yeah. And that point it was like, Oh, it says star Wars on it. I'll take two that type of thing.
01:24:07
Speaker
I got out of that mentality. So now I get things that I really, really like. So I think, yeah, not the strangest, but definitely the rarest, probably the most valuable thing I have. And then in terms of a favorite thing,
01:24:27
Speaker
and is just That is just like a really hard thing. Now, see, I thought I knew what the answer to this was going to be for you. Most of the time, our guests, I have no idea what the answer is going to be. I thought I knew what your answer was going to be.
01:24:40
Speaker
because What did you think was going to be? You have a distinction that not a lot of people that we've had on this show have. And that's something that's usually reserved for the few professional wrestlers we've had on this show.
01:24:54
Speaker
You have your own action figure. That is true. And I thought for sure that was going to be the answer for this. um I love it. I absolutely love it. That is that is true. I 100% love it.
01:25:09
Speaker
um I'm honored that it happened, but it wouldn't be kind of vain to say that that action figure of you is your favorite thing. Absolutely not. favorite Favorite toy in your collection? i mean...
01:25:23
Speaker
I think that transformer can definitely be, be both. Cause that's yeah really cool and amazing. But like, are you kidding me? If I, I i have the, the pop yourself Funko version of myself at the top of my stairs is the first thing anybody sees when they walk into my desk. Yeah. um You know, if I had an actual action figure of myself, that would 1000% be my answer.
01:25:48
Speaker
So I thought, and I thought for sure that would be yours. So mine is more of a figurine than an action figure because it's not articulated. But PMI Kids World, which makes some really cool stuff. They've got to get a cool UFC line coming out next month yeah where the figurines come in little but punching bags.
Personalized Figurines and Nostalgia
01:26:10
Speaker
But they've made Among Us and Pinata Smashlings and Booksy and... Pudgy Penguins. So many cool things. Yeah, they do some hedgehog. um But yeah, PMI, and they just, they're celebrating 30 years this year.
01:26:26
Speaker
um They made figurine of me. And funny enough, I know. So when it showed up, which was a surprise, the second I took it out of the box, I knew exactly what picture they based it off of because my, my, um so i I always throw up the metal horns, you know, like the rock fingers.
01:26:49
Speaker
And, but My arm on the figure, one of my arms is turned with my forearm out. Yeah. it was a pig It was based on a picture of me at a Hasbro breakfast at San Diego Comic-Con, probably in like 2019 or so.
01:27:07
Speaker
And in the picture, I had my forearm out because I was showing an airbrushed Autobot symbol tattoo. Yeah. That was on there. and And whoever the designer was, that must have been their basis because my my fingers are up and my forearm is turned.
01:27:24
Speaker
um But it's awesome. they They nailed the likeness. I mean, it's a real sculpt. um So they sent me two of them. One of them I traveled with for a while and i I took pictures of it kind of like a flat Stanley thing.
01:27:37
Speaker
yeah And admittingly, i I broke one of the little rock fingers off because it's small. It's a figure. But eventually after like taking him ah in and out of the package a bunch of times, I did break one off. But I am told that two more copies exist um at the PMI office, which is in Tel Aviv, Israel.
01:27:57
Speaker
so um So that's there. And The thing you might not know is that I'm also Pinata Smashling. Oh, are have bunch them somewhere.
01:28:10
Speaker
I don't know where they are. They're not in arms. Hay Clay. Hay Clay made a version of me, which, funny enough, I think they modeled their...
01:28:22
Speaker
Hay Clay is like air dry clay. Yeah. But it's super, super detailed. We have the app. use Okay. You use the iPad app. I think they modeled their version of me off the PMI figure.
01:28:34
Speaker
And they brought it they brought it to Licensing Expo. And I know one other guy that has one. I don't know if you know him. His name is Steve Starobinsky. He's another like um familiar guy. He works for Pudgy Penguins now. he used to work for Gel Blaster.
01:28:47
Speaker
um But he has a version of himself in Hay Clay, too. So like those those are out there. But maybe one day I'll have an articulated figure. I don't know. um I ordered a... ah now you Now you got me thinking. I ordered a Jeremy Padua figure from...
01:29:04
Speaker
Major. Yeah. Last year. That hasn't arrived yet. Nope. Not out yet. no Not out yet. So I need I need that. and Got to get that one. Yeah. But I don't have a Funko pop yourself because they don't do the goatee like mine.
01:29:20
Speaker
That's not. They just do the beard. Yeah. Signature. load Not an option yet. Well, James, I had the long hair at the time. That was that was tough trying to figure that part out.
01:29:30
Speaker
Yeah.
Social Media and Closing Remarks
01:29:31
Speaker
You should have waited. night and They have the Mohawk. Yeah, that this brings us to the end of the end of our interview. Thank you so much for for taking the time to to chat with us in an official capacity for once. Jeez, took us long enough.
01:29:44
Speaker
ah Before we we let you go officially, just remind everybody, where can they follow you on social media and where can they um where can they they make sure that they are on top of the pulse of play?
01:29:57
Speaker
Sure. So you can follow me at the rock father on basically any platform you'd like, except for LinkedIn where I'm just James on. And, uh, if you like LinkedIn, I do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. I love that actually over there, but, uh, I'm at the rock father on all your other socials for the toy book.
01:30:17
Speaker
Check us out at toy book.com, the toy insider.com, the pop insider.com. Um, Hit up all of those websites. They have all of our social links. You can subscribe to our magazines.
01:30:30
Speaker
ah I would say for print, print still matters. Print is still awesome. Toy book, you get a subscription, seven issues a year, shipped direct to your mailbox for 50 bucks.
01:30:42
Speaker
So it's a... It's good deal. um It is. Even if I didn't work here, I'd say it was a good deal. So um get that. And then, of course, too, if you run into us at an event, you find us at Toy Fair, Licensing Expo, whatever.
01:30:54
Speaker
We actually have copies of the magazine there um that we will give you for free. um But if you'd like it delivered to your mailbox, you know, grab a subscription. There's nothing like getting mail.
01:31:06
Speaker
I still love getting. Maybe it's just we're we're of that age, but like yeah getting mail that's actually like. look forward to it male. Eric, we have a frame of reference for public access television. I think we're age. and and i know. and know was more so for the I was going to explain what a fax machine was for the people for for the younger demographic that listens, but i they can Google it.
01:31:28
Speaker
or at local re check pp I was at my local record store the other day we were talking about like yeah tapes. You used to be able to tape songs off the radio. yeah And that like blew some like younger kids' mind.
01:31:40
Speaker
Well, listen, before before we get a tariff slapped on this episode, Dave, i send send us home. Yeah. um I liked yours. Everybody be on the pulse of play.
01:31:55
Speaker
Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies. Find more about them both in our show notes.
01:32:11
Speaker
Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
01:32:27
Speaker
Don't try this at home. Voidware prohibited and some assembly required. Each sold separately, not a flying toy. Consult a physician if your toy run exceeds more than four hours.
01:32:35
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation. Executive producer, Frank Hablaui. This program and many others like it on the Non-Productive Network is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.